Twist the Sinews
by Michael Spenik
Summary: Despite numerous challenges, Richard Michaels has managed to build a good home and raise his family in the now prospering Houston area. He has survived enemies old and new, and now an unknown opponent strikes at him and his family in an effort to take what he has built and make it theirs. And along the way his son, Anthony, and his adopted daughter, Maddie are pulled into danger.


Twist the Sinews…

A Richard Michaels Novel

Twist the Sinews…

A Richard Michaels Novel

Michael Spenik A Novel in the world of Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews

June 2016

Dedication

For all those who read, who want to be in the worlds they experience. Don't give up the dream…

Contents

 **Acknowledgements xi**

 **Introduction 1**

 **Prologue… 3**

 **Twist the Sinews… 7**

 **Epilogue… 182**

Acknowledgements

This is the first non-cookie cutter acknowledgement I've done in a while, and there's a reason for it. I started this series two years ago when I accidentally wrote a book while on a deployment in Afghanistan and started writing down a dream I'd had about a Kate Daniels book, then the daydreams that followed. It was a pretty simple concept then, a "what if" scenario of an Army veteran that gets thrust deeply into the world of shapeshifters and the politics they deal with. Yes, it was a love story, I'm a romantic at heart even if it seems I'll be a perpetual bachelor, but I kept moving forward until I crossed it with the Daniels' characters and locked myself on a timeline with them.

Initially the characters were completely fictional, roughly based on characters I knew in stories and movies, though by the time I got to _Fearful Symmetry…_ I'd started to pull characters from D &D adventures and then other sources as I got a bug in my head about something I'd watched or read (thank you _Buffy_ and other various works I go "ooh, squirrel" on) and had to put a type of character in my books. And so, as I finished _On what wings…_ when I had a relatively select cast to work with, I subconsciously started building a deeper character list.

As you know, this resulted in what I call "spin-off" books, _Jabberwocky_ and _Cauldrons_ , books that are in the series, though not as long and not focused on Richard, as the other books are. And now writing became harder, because I didn't want to discard the new characters and I needed to do justice to them, especially after _Hand dare sieze…_ when I realized I had three new main protagonists that had to be sharing the spotlight with Richard, Tasha and Autumn. That said, I dabbled in the stories and fates of those extra characters in the last novels and novellas, but this one really brings them fully into the world, and if you like Maddie and Tony's previous adventures, I hope that you enjoy this book, even if you end up yelling at it a few times at the choices they make.

And just in case you wondered, yes, this is still the favorite series that I have written and one of the top five series I love of all time, and if you've read John Ringo, you understand.

Introduction

The world is a messed up place. Thirty years ago, technology was law in the world, and magic the thing of legends and stories. Man had conquered the science of the world, flying above the clouds with feats of scientific wonder, reaching even to the planets beyond. But the scales had tipped too far, and magic had been dormant for far too long, and it returned with a vengeance. Its return was the first Flare, when science and technology failed, planes fell from the sky, guns refused to fire, combustion engines stalled and broke, and angry wild creatures were spilled into the world to rage and destroy. Millions died that day, and in the days that followed as technology and magic shifted back and forth like the tide.

Years have passed, and the world has returned to a sense of normalcy, or as close as it can get when the threat of random magic generated creatures popping into existence any minute is a real possibility. This is the world now, after the Shift, after the return of magic, and some who slept since its last reign in this world…

Prologue…

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!" Maddie shouts in excitement as she picks the thick envelope out of the stack that arrived that morning at Aunt Autumn's magic shop, now named "Beyond Narnia: The Wolf, the Witch and the Archer". She is sitting at the front counter on a stool with a cup of hot chocolate in front of her, despite the heat of the early summer outside.

"I haven't spoken the teenage language in many moons, dear niece," Autumn says from behind the counter as she sips her herbal tea and looks over the rim at her boisterous adopted relative.

Maddie is sixteen going on thirty, five feet two inches of lean muscled werewolf that in human form would make the Amazons of olde jealous of her workout routine and results. She is currently wearing slightly baggy jeans and black Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars with white rubber and a simple black wife beater shirt. Her hair is the longest it has been in months, magically coaxed to be ten inches of dark brown hair combed into a carefully coifed accentuation to her nearly axe sharp features and piercing eyes. The girl from a year ago replaced with a much harder and cynical version, though she has her moments.

"It means she's excited," Tony says with a smirk from where he sits at the table closer to the back of the shop.

"Watch the snark," Autumn warns her nephew with pointed finger.

Tony is less than a year older than Maddie, seventeen years old, but mentally closer to fifty with the weight of the last year weighing him down heavily. Following a disastrous explosion after he allowed a defeated opponent to live, as well as a bargain and challenge made by Tony's father and Autumn's brother Richard, he had emerged with scars running up the left side of his body and more magic than any three powerful magic users combined. The scars are ripples of ruined flesh of horrible burns, but patterned by the burning magic to look like the northern lights of the aurora borealis, shifting through the visible spectrum constantly. He is reading a regulation book from the Merc Guild in preparation for taking an exam that will allow him a better certification that will open more jobs for the shop, and has not looked up from it as they make the exchange. Despite not looking up, Autumn is certain that he can sense her pointed finger and gaze, as well as parse out the scents in the room and hear everything in the building, as the same accident ratcheted his senses beyond the superhuman sensitivity that even shapeshifters have.

"My firearms permit finally came in!" Maddie says excitedly as she opens the envelope, ignoring her aunt and boyfriend, having been dating Tony for some months now. "See!" she excitedly shows her new ID card to Autumn as she looks at the shiny badge that accompanies it.

Autumn takes the small card and looks at it carefully then looks back at the teenage girl with her "adult" face on full.

"Why does it say that you are a Class III distributor?" she asks, with a raised eyebrow and a frown, turning to show the small lettering on the card.

Maddie pauses in her excitement with widened eyes then a nervous smile, "Oh, yeah, that…"

"I'm not selling guns," Autumn says with a frown. "I have not ever, nor will I ever, sell guns. I sell books. I sell herbs, some relatively minor magic items, and I sell tea. I also sell, on rare occasion, rare and expensive alcoholic drinks, for which I have a license. I do **not** sell guns or weapons. Period."

"I totally agree," Maddie says with her hands in front of her defensively as she shakes her head. "I would never, ever ask you to do anything you don't want to, not ever, and I completely understand that you don't ever want to sell guns."

"I notice, my dear niece, that you did not answer my intended line of inquiry," Autumn says, her voice firm with more ice in it than before. "Why do you have a Class III weapons distribution certification in the state of Texas and recognized Federally?"

"Just in case," Maddie says with a shrug. "If I want to buy a flamethrower," she pauses at the sharp look Autumn gives her. "If I _need_ a flamethrower for a job to kill evil magic spiders that are killing kids, I now can."

"That's ownership, not distribution," Autumn says, ignoring the attempt to distract her with a noble scenario where gratuitous flammability would be needed.

"Dad offered to smooth it out and get her the distributor at no extra cost if she would be the intermediary for the Agogites if needed," Tony says from the back table, again without looking up.

"It's a five thousand dollar difference of cost, and gives me an option down the road, as well as starts my credibility now," she says quickly to Autumn, then picks up an apple from the basket on the counter and tosses it at Tony with a frown. "Snitch."

Tony grabs the fruit from the air before it hits him in the head without looking up, then pulls it down and takes a bite from the green apple while continuing to read.

"No explosives or flammables in my building, period," Autumn says with frown and pointed finger at the repentant looking teenager.

"Promise," she says solemnly as she draws an X over her heart, then stands up. "I need to go to the Guild, I can now buy that pistol and rifle I've been saving for."

Tony finally glances up from his book, "The .44 magnum or the .454?"

"Not sure yet," she says as she picks up the collared shirt from the stool next to her and puts it on without buttoning it. "I'm going to drool on the cases and maybe test fire them if the tech holds, then decide."

"The .454 will be a slower reload," Tony reminds her, returning to his book as she walks over to him. "But you can't deny the authority of the round and the heft of the weapon. You can use it as a club when magic comes in unexpectedly."

"Thanks, babe," she says softly as she leans down and gives him a kiss on the cheek that bares only a four inch long scar from an axe.

He turns and gives her a solid kiss on the lips in return, and she rubs her nose against him with her eyes closed before she turns back to the front, grabs her backpack and leaves.

Twist the Sinews…

Richard exits the main conference room on the third floor of his building, Hoffman Resources, heading back to his office. The day is just another in a row for him, as he is consolidating a major opponent company into his own after acquiring a large portion of its stock over the last six months while using proxies to hide the acquisitions. The smokescreen to hide it had fallen away last week and the company sent him a letter with an intent to merge so that the other board of directors will survive and keep their jobs.

Though not against the survivalist nature of their mood, he has been pushing hard to have his lawyers ensure that his own larger company remains dominant and that he has the authority to restructure the merging company. He has been making placating noises and giving the lines needed to get the job done, but in the end many of the Vice Presidents on the board are going to be looking for new jobs. If they were successful he would not have won the hostile takeover, and he will not own a weak company.

He pauses at his office door, the hairs on the back of his neck rising as a slight pulse of magic reaches him, a tendril of power and he turns in place with his chin raised. He stretches his senses, listening and extending his awareness, feeling with a sixth sense he did not have prior to becoming a shapeshifter that has to do with magic. He frowns internally, turns from his office and ascends the single flight of stairs to the roof to meet his visitor.

He walks out onto the roof in the dark of the night, the sky overcast, blocking the stars of the sky as well as the half-filled moon. Across the roof is a solitary figure sitting in one of the folding chairs Richard keeps up here, and Richard can see the man clearly despite the dim light. He can feel his connection to his sword, Kriggshere, resting a few miles away, ready to be called to his hand should he wish it. He does not call his sword or pull his dagger, though, instead striding across to the man who rises from his seat.

"I see you've managed to make time to meet me, after all this time," Richard says simply, waiting in a relaxed posture, though internally he is ready to leap into combat, adrenaline surging through his system at the knowledge of who is standing not six feet from him, his inner tiger barely contained within his chest.

"This is good," the man says, lifting the mason jar he has pulled from the refrigerator located not far off on the roof. "Where did you get it? I would like to get a bottle."

"Thor brews it in his free time," Richard says easily, though still wound tight internally. "Brewed in casks made from the ruins of Brunhild's fleet, or so he says. 'Not meant for mortal men' is how he likes to describe it."

The man meets Richard's gaze levelly, a tight smile on his Middle Eastern features, a short beard on his face peppered with grey and his temples more salt than pepper. He has short hair, almost long enough to grab but not quite, a sharp nose and bushy brows without looking like it is too much. His face is handsome, nearly beautiful, and the word seems inadequate to describe it… Richard mentally shakes himself from the glamour or whatever the man uses to do that.

"You visited my sister," Richard says flatly, walking to the edge of the roof, his hands clasped behind his back.

"And she has since accepted my offer," Roland says, screwing on the metal cap of the jar. "I come bearing another offer to you."

Richard pauses at the edge of the roof in his three piece suit, looking across at the dimly lit city of Houston before him. Roland walks up beside him, jar in hand and with dark slacks and a white collared shirt, the top pair of buttons open against the Texas summer heat. After a moment of silence Richard speaks.

"Keep your offers, I am not interested in bargains with any other powers that be," he says simply, turning from the city to look at the ancient wizard.

"You are doing well, but you could do better," Roland continues, glancing at the contents of the jar. "With my oversight you could bring the shapeshifters of the entire continent into your Horde, and fortify your place in this next age of man."

He stares into Richard's eyes with the last, his brown eyes staring into his soul as he does.

"Not interested," Richard replies immediately. "I appreciate the offer, but I will do this on my own."

"Hmm," Roland says with a slight frown, turning from Richard and walking towards the door exiting the roof. He speaks as he walks away, not looking back, "The war will come, whether you wish to participate or not. Be careful whom you cull as your allies and enemies."

Richard takes a breath before answering, "I will."

Roland drops a business card behind him as he reaches the door on the roof, "I will pay well for a barrel of that mead. Please contact my man."

Richard watches the door open of its own volition despite technology ruling the world, and the man who thinks himself a god exits, gooseflesh rising on Richard's entire body as he leaves.

Richard is on the roof of his barn, bare chested and sweating with a pair of steel rods in his hands, each a bit over two feet long. His feet are shoulder width apart and shifting as he swings the steel at his opponent across from him, also armed with a pair of steel rods that ring as they strike his own. Where he is just a bit over five and a half feet tall, broad in shoulders with a solidly muscled waist and well-defined arms and legs, his opponent is only a few inches shorter, leaner and with dirty blond braids of hair falling below her shoulders and out of the way. His stubble covered head and jaw are dark in the afternoon light against his lightly tanned skin, and his opponent has paler skin with a stronger jaw and nearly cleft chin on her handsome features.

Tasha lifts her leg from a sweeping strike from one of Richard's batons, twisting on the toes of her other foot and backswings into Richard's right leg. The leg is knocked out with a groan as Richard lands hard on his shoulders and lies still on the platform as Tasha shifts to another defensive stance.

"You're sloppy today, lover," she says with a frown as she relaxes her stance, Richard still lying on the platform and looking at the few clouds above them in the blue sky.

"Roland visited me yesterday afternoon," he replies, still staring heavenward. "Invited me to join him in order to push my agenda faster and to gain control of all shapeshifters on the continent."

"And you told him no," Tasha says without hesitation as she sets the batons to the side.

Richard blinks and looks to the side at her, seeing the full belief in her expression and blue eyes as she looks back. He smiles tightly as she walks to him then straddles him, setting her weight on his hips and playing her fingers gently on his abdomen.

"You know that how?" he asks, trying to buy time and order his thoughts better.

"I know my mate and husband," she says softly as she leans down to be nose to nose with him, impossible to ignore as her sharp blue eyes pierce his being and stills his inner beast. "You would no more sell another into the slavery of another than you would accept that yoke yourself."

"You've been talking with Sif again," Richard accuses, frowning at his mate but wrapping his arms around her nonetheless.

"Thor is trying very hard to re-establish our alliance," she says with a focused look at him. "I think you should let him, at least let us start to mend the bridge with them. Ragnar is imprisoned nearly as badly as Loki was in folklore, as they promised."

"They always escape, love," he says with a tight frown. "Always, and then wreak havoc on the innocent and helpless when they do."

"Your salve is that you did not decide that," she admonishes him, using the cadence and speech of the Vikings on purpose. "Odin did, and what horrors result from it is on his soul, not yours."

"If he has a soul," Richard grumbles, glancing away.

Tasha folds her hands across his chest and gives him a few inches of space as he looks away unhappy before she speaks again.

"Do we need to change our course, because of Roland?" she asks, the hinting accent gone and all business as the Nimir-ra of the Houston Horde.

He sighs, "I don't know. I don't see how, even if we needed to, as this is the road we must travel. I'll try to make more contingencies, but I'm not sure what good it will do."

Tasha snorts, "I didn't think it was possible to have more contingencies."

"When you need it and don't have it, you sing a different tune…" he says softly, a common saying for him and she smirks at his distant gaze.

She grabs his rough chin with two fingers and points his eyes back at her, "Do you think he'll make a move?"

Richard works his mouth for a few moments, then glances to the side of the platform then back at her before speaking in a tone she can barely hear, even from the few inches away that she is with supernatural hearing.

"He has a daughter and having met him and felt what his power feels like, what it tastes like… I now know who she is," he says with a pensive expression.

She narrows her eyes and stills at his tone and reaction, all amusement and playing gone as she digests the words.

"Even if she were a child, you would never use that against him, leverage them," she says slowly and carefully, stopping as she realizes the pain on his face, a memory she does not know hitting him.

"Not now, no," he says with a swallow and a shake of his head. "But she is grown, and not exactly his ally."

More levels and depth causes Tasha to blink as she thinks over the implications, but her inner lioness leaps on the other revelation.

"You have used children against people before?" she asks softly, unsure what response she expects.

She knows, intellectually, that her husband and mate has done dark things in his past, things that haunt him still. Having read and spent time studying that aspect of the world, as well as recent experiences she thought she knew what he meant, but now she questions her own knowledge and understanding of him.

"Forget I said anything," he says with a shake of his head, twisting to push her off and stand.

She growls at him and pins his shoulders to the platform with a brief flash of teeth and a flash of gold in her eyes. His own beast responds, gripping her hips and his eyes flashing orange in answer, lifting her up. She wraps her legs around him and pulls him with her with a snarl now, pulling him into a tight embrace, neither willing to use claws or teeth to hurt the other. Richard is on top of her now, their bodies close as she growls low in her throat next to his ear, her nose scratching against the rough hair of his scalp. He tries to push away but she has wrapped herself around him, refusing to let go without a fight.

"Your ghosts have no place here," she says in a rough voice after a few moments of flexing that she shows she will not let him go easily. "That is not who you are anymore."

He lowers himself from trying to push himself up and lowers himself to his elbows, and his voice is strained as he answers her, "I wish I had your certainty."

She flexes and pushes him away to a kneeling position, her legs still locked around his midsection as she smirks at him now from a foot away, her shoulders braced on the platform as her hands cradle his head.

"That is why you have me, to remind you that though you can't fix everything by yourself, you can still do what needs to be done while being my man," she says with a crooked smile.

With that she shifts her legs in a flash and tosses him to his back again before he can answer, scrambling on top of him to distract his thoughts to other things.

Tasha is sitting on the back picnic table of the cabin within the Bastion, busying her hands with cutting up the ribs that will be prepared for tonight's barbeque while adjudications are given in the Stadium. Her mind is elsewhere as she and the other female Alphas from all the clans sit at the table, working together. The look of incomprehension by all but two of the women when she had informed them all at the last Council of Alphas had caused Mrs. Domasca, the witch Wolf Alpha, to laugh and had become a suspicious ally in the activity.

This is the third time the women Alphas are all seated at the large table with meat and cooking implements surrounding them. The first time had been strained, as not all the women ran households in the manner that Tasha (and apparently Bridgette) did, participating in the preparation of the food. They have been showing the others how to cook and organize as they chat about the business of the Horde.

"How fares Maddie?" Tasha asks as she slices the large beef ribs into singles and tossing the cut pieces into another bin beside the table.

"Impressively capable for one so young," Bridgette Domasca says with a wry smile as she looks up at Tasha from where her attention is focused on putting herbs and spices into a marinade sauce. "For whatever reason she is very capable in organizing and getting the others of her group to cooperate. She has great potential."

"The Agoge taught her and many others the usefulness of a controlled approach, as well as discipline," Alexa says, a stocky and dark haired were bear, the female Alpha of Clan Heavy, Noel being the male Heavy Alpha and her uncle. "It has been very useful instilling skills within our own Clan as well."

"Before the question is raised, I will answer it," Tasha says with a smirk and shake of her head. "The Khan does not intend to run another Agoge course until next summer, after the schools finish for the year. He will be running an intense training period this summer, but _not_ an Agoge."

"As much as I know that I do not understand the mind of the Khan," Bridgette says neutrally as she pinches garlic into her sauce without looking at Tasha. "We need the fully trained warriors now, not next year. It may be too late by then."

"Unless you are aware of information I am not," Tasha says with a sharp tone and look at the only human at the table. "Then the decision is logical, as we cannot have our own activities interfere with the regular workings of the other cultures we deal with. And we are still busy organizing and establishing ourselves in Louisiana and elsewhere."

"Many of the Agogites are busy liaising with and establishing our credentials with the newer territories," Mischa says from where she sits in a folding chair at the end of the table.

Mischa is the Cat Clan Alpha, dark of hair, fair of skin and long of leg compared to Tasha's slightly stocky feel, and with a nearly delicate looking beauty. She is also several months pregnant with Tasha and Richard's unborn triplets, Tasha scarred from a previous injury and unable to carry a child to term, Mischa serving as a surrogate for her friend.

"We don't have the personnel to run the program right now," Mischa continues as she shucks corn quickly and efficiently with a toss of her head. "We can maintain our security, and we still have teams ready for reaction if necessary, but we still don't have a firm grasp past Oklahoma to the north or the Texas border to the East. Once we stabilize, then we can have another class."

"We are vulnerable in the interim," the Hispanic woman at the table says as she accepts another tray from a passing teenage male, more beef ribs to be cut. Short and stout, Amabilia Torres is married to the Rat Clan's Alpha, and by default the female Alpha, though not a natural leader and dominant. "Our alliance with the Vikings is not as strong as it once was, and though the People and their undead are no longer a threat locally, there are still many enemies out there that would love to see us take a hit."

"They used dark magic to bring a god into this world," Bridgette says with a dark look at the others at the table. "We cannot condone that activity, even if they have slapped the wrists of those that survived the casting."

"The Khan will be meeting with Thor this week to negotiate a true alliance," Tasha says immediately after Domasca, stealing her thunder with the statement. "We will be requiring trade concessions and preferential treatment and priorities, as well as martial aid in any conflicts that arise."

"They will not be happy with those terms," Amabilia notes with a frown as she thinks through the meaning of the alliance, slower than the other women at the table.

"But they will accept," Mischa says with firm nod as she drops another shucked corn into the bin at her side before stretching her back for a moment against the extra weight in her belly. "Thor is our friend, all things aside, and Odin knows what we are capable of, what the Khan is capable of. Our disruption of their casting shows that the Horde is not a small influence in the land, but significant."

"Odin will have another angle," a dark skinned woman sitting next to Amabilia says as she absently opens cans of baked beans to pour into a ceramic pot in front of her. Wife to Akbar Al-Hamadi, she is the female Alpha to Clan Jackal, the newest of the Alphas as the previous Jackal Alphas had betrayed the Horde by given information to Roland then challenged Richard for leadership of the Horde when it was revealed. Slight and generally quiet with a dark cloth over her head and neck, she speaks infrequently and quietly, but with great thought behind her words.

"What do you mean, Sari?" Tasha asks, drawing out the shy woman, the name a nickname for those who know her well. Tasha has been using her own influence to keep Sari from being challenged from within her clan with help from Jameson, the dirty blond female Alpha of the Bouda Clan who sits next to Sari.

"Odin sees the pattern and looks beyond the immediate goal to his own…" she pauses, looking for the words, English not her native language and still awkward with the speech. "Not his goal, but how he feels the ending of the story should be…"

"His desired endstate," Tasha supplies, using terms Richard has used numerous times.

"Yes," Sari says with a slow, thoughtful nod. "Odin has other motives, hidden ones, and he pulls the strings of others to reach his goals."

"We remain vigilant and alert," Jameson says from Sari's side, picking up a piece of pork to put in the beans, cutting into smaller pieces. "Where the Khan leads, we go, and stay alert for our enemies."

Tasha only nods, knowing it is far from that simple…

Tony walks into his apartment as he pulls his mask from his face, knowing that both Maddie and Ashley are here, the latter being the ten year old girl he had somehow come to live with instead of letting the orphan loose to live on the street. Ashley is at the counter of his kitchen standing on a step stool, carefully measuring out food into Tupperware containers for lunches and future dinner meals, her black hair pulled into two loose pigtails on her shoulders. The once homeless girl is a stickler for not wasting anything at all, measuring and hoarding every little bit that they use in the apartment. A life of little and barely surviving reflected in her habits and nuances, her big brown eyes always watching and calculating.

Tony tilts his head to the side as he steps into the common room, where Maddie is sitting on his weight bench with a metal tube in her hand, a pistol grip attached to it with other metal tubes and cones arrayed around her on the floor.

"What is that?" he asks, frowning as he looks at the nearly two dozen cone like objects around her with red, yellow or green tips on them.

"So, remember when Aunt A said no explosives in her shop?" she says tentatively as she gently sets the tube to the side, showing it to be only a couple inches in diameter and less than two yards in length.

"Those are explosives?" he asks, tense as he looks at the arrayed metal objects on his floor, nervous now as the tech is up.

"They aren't armed, so relax," she says in a soothing voice as she places her hands on his shoulders and steps into him. "I was looking at the stuff at the Guild and ran into Mitchell, and he talked me into getting the RPG to store just in case we need it later, for the Agogites."

"RPG?" he asks, his mind digging for the term.

"Rocket propelled grenade," she says, turning with an arm around him as she points at the tube she had set down. "That's the launcher, with sights. Not a hand me down from the Middle East, but a better quality Chinese version with milled components."

"And those are the grenades it shoots?" he asks, looking at the cone shaped objects in groups on the floor, eight of each of the different colors now that he counts them.

"The launcher is reusable, and pretty accurate with practice," she says with a grin as she points at the grenades. "I should be able to hit a one meter target at a 300 yards with just a little time at the range. The heads are incendiary, anti-armor and anti-personnel."

Tony swallows on a slightly dry mouth, realizing now what is sitting on his floor, then calmly asks, "Do we have somewhere safe to lock them up?"

"Mitchell is having a safe sent over to store it, no cost," she says with a smile, turning back to him and hugging him, oblivious to his reactions. "If we need to use any of it for work, we just pay back for the heads we use, unless we break the launcher."

Tony clears his throat and just nods, not wanting to fight about this, as it is all done, even though he is more than a touch uncomfortable with the whole thing.

"And did you get your guns?" he asks, kissing her briefly on the top of her head then letting her go to hang up his arrows and bow from his day of traveling around town.

"I know it's a slower reload, but I got the .454 Casull revolver with a neat addition," she says with a grin as she pulls the huge handgun from the holster strapped to her thigh.

On a normal human of her size, the gun would be considered a cannon and impossible to fire without breaking her wrists, the heavy steel construction and the kick from the massive round meant for a man weighing 300 pounds and willing to take a beating with each shot fired. For a werewolf, the recoil is heavy but manageable, even for one as short as Maddie, and the pain negligible compared to other things she has endured. The six inch long barrel past the five round cylinder has another barrel below it, about an inch across and Tony does not need to narrow his eyes to study it from the few feet away.

"The second barrel is single shot, what is it?" he asks, puzzled as he sorts his arrows out to the storage bins while Maddie grins and opens the lower barrel to the side to show where another shell sits.

"A 20mm grenade launcher," she says in a near squeal, closing the breach and pulling another shell from the gunslinger belt she wears, .454 rounds and 20mm rounds on leather loops. "Fires explosives, flechettes or solid shot."

"Is it impact resistant?" he asks, knowing that once the tech drops it is nothing but a club.

"Military rated and comes with a money back guarantee," she says with a grin as she nearly hops in place as she looks down at the heavy gun in her hands. "Unless I bend the barrel intentionally, they'll replace it if broken. It means a small monthly payment, but worth it, I think."

"How fast is the reloading?" he asks, pulling his leather armor off next to his weight rack to hang on his wooden rack.

"Single rounds, no speed loader," she says with a slight frown, then holsters the massive gun to walk to where a long lever action rifle is leaning in the corner. "But the round is compatible with this, a 20 inch barreled lever action .454, so it's the same round and I don't have to worry about mixing and matching rounds. Only good to a hundred and fifty yards or so, but the round is over three hundred grains."

Tony pauses as he thinks that over before saying, "That's more than four times heavier than the ARs that dad has issued to the Horde security teams."

"I know!" Maddie says excitedly, working the lever of the rifle with a smile. "I'll be able to take on anything too big or stubborn to go down with a regular rifle."

"I'm happy that you're happy," he says with a tight smile, trying to hide his sigh.

"What is it?" she asks with a frown at him, leaning the rifle to the side again, her tone concerned as she walks to him, where his back is towards her, looking at the baskets of arrows stacked in the corner next to his bookcase and Ashley's nest of blankets and pillows.

He sighs again, not trying to hide it and speaking low to keep the conversation from reaching Ashley in the kitchen with human hearing.

"I'm just worried, is all," he says as he runs a hand over his scalp, the dark hair a finger's length long, the scarring on his left side reaching to the height of his eyebrow and back past his ear and almost to the spine in the back. "I'm straining my brain on these certifications for the Guild, which are not cheap or easy by any stretch of the imagination, and you are getting a lot of stuff for the… store, company? I don't even know what to call it…"

She turns him around to face her and she takes his jaw gently in her hand, looking at him firmly with a solemn expression.

"I know you're not quitting on me," she says with a no nonsense tone, studying his face and eyes. "So what's going on in there?"

He smiles tightly, "It's just going so fast, that's all. It feels like yesterday I was trying to figure out how to live up to being the Khan's son, and now this… and us…"

Maddie smiles tightly and taps him lightly on the cheek to get him to look at her brown eyes, "I know it's a lot, but we are still our own people. We are not a reflection or shadow of Rick. He's family, but we make our own way. Right?"

"Right," he says with a firm nod, wrapping his arms slowly around her hips.

"We're in this together, you and me," she says firmly, her finger playing with a ripple of scar tissue on his jaw gently. "Just stay the course, and we'll be fine."

He smiles at her, tilting his head at her, and she looks at him with narrowed eyes, "What?"

"I know you hate to be reminded," he says with a smirk as he tightens his grip on her waist, hugging her tight. "But you sound like him sometimes, only in a sexy Viking shield maiden kind of way."

She snorts and frowns at him, pushing him half-heartedly as he leans forward and plants a series of kisses on her neck, "Shut up."

"Can we have lasagna tonight?" Ashley asks tentatively from the kitchen, looking over the counter separating the living room from the kitchen.

"Sure thing, small fry," Tony says as he pulls back from a laughing Maddie. "Pull out the pasta and the tray, we'll work on the meat and cheese."

Autumn chants softly under her breath as she pulls the magick around her in the circle she has created in the back yard of her shop. The ten yard by ten yard swath of green grass is immaculately maintained and she is sitting in a lotus position with the Staff of Babylon across her thighs and her hands pinched loosely in front of her. Her dark brown hair with strands of silver is pulled into a French braid down her back in a rope to her hips, he dark eyes closed under a strong brow as she gathers the magick around her.

A few yards across from her sits a four legged creature in a similar circle, connected to her own with complicated bindings in the ground. The creature was once a German Shepherd, but an accident of spellcasting had transmuted it into a hybrid of a dragon and other creatures. After a number of minor tests, she now seeks to adjust the creature's form to something more natural to its psyche.

Her voice reaches a crescendo as she pulls the strings of magick that connect the staff to the creature across from her, and she pulls and twists the strings with her will. The connections between her to the staff and the staff to Max, the German Shepherd, glow in her upgraded magical sight, different hues denoting the relationships and power levels by their intensity. She tugs on some, twists others while pushing power and pulling them to contort and shift Max's form to her own wishes. After ten minutes of silent adjustment, the highly trained dog across from her sitting silent and obedient with a racing heart as it feels it's body shift and change, Autumn opens her eyes and looks at Max and his new form.

Max had been a mix of dog, cat, dragon and alligator after the first transmutation, and while still imbued with the nature of a dragon, he no longer retains the traits of a cat or alligator. Autumn rises to her feet as she dispels the circles and calls Max to her side, who rises stiffly and hesitantly as he feels his body once again in a familiar form. The scales that had replaced his fur remains, a thick ruff of heavy scales over his neck and shoulders, but the thick gator tail is once more a thin and energetic tail similar to a dog, and front paws reminiscent of a wolf or dog's.

The tail wags energetically as Max steps up to Autumn, and she reaches out to him with a grin of her own to see him happy in a his new form, natural and familiar to the dog. Not similar is the size of the Dragon Shepherd, who no longer weighs in at the hundred pounds of his canine ancestors, but closer to three hundred pounds of enhanced strength and speed, standing a touch over three feet at the shoulder. Autumn rubs his neck and scratches under the thick scales of his neck with a smile, Max's eyes nearly level with her own five feet of height.

"Good Max, good dog," she says, pausing and correcting herself. "Good drake, you're a good drake, yes you are."

"Glad to see that worked out okay," a rough voice says from behind her, and she continues to give the altered dog attention as she responds without looking behind her to the concrete pad porch behind her shop.

"Of course it worked out," she says as she smooths the scales down after the vigorous rub down. "I was in total control the entire time."

"I am relieved to hear that," Stanislov Lisovsky replies with a smirk of his own, sitting on the wrought iron chair on the patio, part of a set with a table.

Stan is nearly six feet tall standing, solid in shoulders and midsection, with muscles used regularly in outdoor activities and hardened with rough use. The leader of the Russian White Vohls in the region with a dark brown beard and finger length hair, he has been seeing Autumn romantically for some months now, though she refuses to put a label on the relationship.

"You didn't have to stay and watch," she admonishes as she leads Max into the house, Stan following her in his white robes and long staff, looking like a much younger Gandalf the White from Lord of the Rings.

"Better safe than sorry, I think," he says with a gentle tone, then shrugging. "And I had nothing better to do. It was this or help babysit my sister's kids."

"I like your nieces and nephews," Autumn says as they walk into the nearly industrial level kitchen, Max sitting next to his food bowl and watching Autumn intensely as she pulls meat from the refrigerator.

"On the whole, I do as well," Stan agrees with a smile, moving to make tea for them. "But I dislike changing diapers, as much as I love them all."

Autumn snorts as she pulls the sealed plastic container from the fridge with ground beef in it and pauses, looking at Max for a moment. The drake shakes his tail more vigorously at the attention, drool starting to gather on his massive lower jaw but sitting obediently as he waits for his dinner. Autumn looks at the ground beef and the big bowl of cooked rice next to it for filler and does the mental math of how much of each to put into the large steel bowl for the drake's dinner.

After scooping a meat heavy meal into the bowl she stirs the mix up while chanting under her breath, heating the mixture to less than boiling but over normal body temperature, around a hundred ten degrees. She sets the finished meal on the ground and Max stills his tail as he waits with strained muscles for the command to eat. Autumn waits before giving the command as Stan sets out the two cups of tea on the center table a few feet away, and she pours water into another dish beside the food. She steps back and pauses, looking at the waiting drake, then nods.

"Eat," she says, and the drake dives into his meal, tail wagging absently as it enjoys the beef, rice and gravy concoction.

"Last adjustment, I presume?" Stan asks, glancing at the drake.

"The paws were easy, it was the tail I didn't understand," she says with shrug, picking up her tea and taking a sip, sighing at the pleasure of it being just the way she liked it. "But yes, that was the last time I'll need to adjust him. I can't change him back, but now he's just a larger, scaled version of what he used to be, he isn't unnatural."

"So what's next, then?" Stan asks, tilting his head in curiosity.

Autumn sips her tea to buy herself time, glancing at him as she does. He had never asked why or how she does what she does, has simply been there to help and watch without prying, his patience seemingly limitless. They have been seeing each other for quite a while, and she considers him her best friend and confidant, though she has not shared much with him, due to the complicated life of her brother. She sets the cup down and steels herself for the conversation ahead, something she has been putting off for far too long.

"Stan, why are you here?" she asks, her hands wrapped around the cup and her staff leaning against the heavy wooden table beside her. "Is it the staff? The tablets? Why do you stick around?"

Stan pauses from sipping his tea, a surprised expression on his face and he carefully sets down his tea, glancing nervously from the cup to her face.

"I didn't expect this conversation right now," he says with more nervousness than she has ever seen in him before. "Though I suppose this as good a time as any."

She narrows her eyes at him, "It's the tablets, isn't it?"

He looks puzzled for a moment, then shakes his head, nearly scoffing with a snort, "Those old cuneiform things? No, I don't care about those things."

Now Autumn is puzzled, "Then why do you keep coming to the shop? Why are you here?"

Stan tilts his head to the side, smirking now as he looks at her, and she turns her gaze away as heat rises to her cheeks, he being the only one who has ever been able to do this to her in years.

"I'm here because you're here," he says with amusement in his tone. "And if you were to leave, I'd go wherever it is you went to."

Autumn blinks and leans back, surprised at his answer, "I'm just another Celtic Witch, no one to follow for any reason."

Stan snorts and smiles at her, "Putting aside the odd things you did to your dog, I disagree. You are far more than that to me."

Autumn shakes her head and starts to argue, but then his words really hit her. _Far more than that to me_.

"I need some air," she says hastily, standing quickly with the stool she had been sitting on scraping on the floor and Max glances up at her rushed movement.

She hurries out the door as she feels the tightness in her chest, forcing herself to calm down and relax, to take a deep breath. After a few long moments when her heart is not so loud in her ears she hears the back door slowly open, Stan cautiously stepping onto the concrete pad. She is gripping her staff with white knuckles and she is looking at the early twilight stars in the sky, searching for peace.

"I'm sorry that this comes as a surprise to you," he says carefully from behind her, and she tenses as she hears him step to a few feet behind her. "But I thought I was being fairly clear, though I suppose I was wrong. I will fix that now, and tell you plainly. I love you, Autumn. Have for some time now, and I want you to know that I am here for you, whether you return the feelings or not. I will always be yours."

Without another word he turns from her and she watches as he walks past her to the gate on the high wooden fence surrounding her backyard. He opens and pauses before leaving, looking at her with and expression mixed with sadness and hope that twists her heart inside. Before she can compose something to say he looks down and away, leaving her to her jumbled thoughts as he leaves…

Tony walks into the front foyer of the Mercenary Guild, his Ghost patterned mask over his face, the one he has been using frequently since the night he was force to kill his two best friends. The two young Viking warriors who had taught him most of what knew of archery and combat had helped their father, Ragnar, become Baldur, Norse god of the sun. They had tried to stop Tony from investigating and interfering with the spell, as they had been complicit in abducting Maddie with Gaston, an enemy he had thought dead months before. Tony had won the battle between he and the two older and more experienced fighters, but the scars he emerged with were far more damaging than the visible scar on his arm and jawline, they burned deep on his soul…

Tony stops at the arrayed cork boards on the wall of the foyer, scanning the pinned tickets arrayed in front of him, looking for specific colors and codes on the top corners of the tickets. He drifts to the government tickets, usually only up for a few hours at most if it is not a simple finding job on a bail hopper, one of the clerks pinning up a new ticket. He studies the dark red ticket, his eyes narrowing as he recalls the meaning of the code on the corner, as well as the payout on the bottom corner. He reaches out and takes the ticket from the board, the first and only person to see it as he tucks the paper in his pocket as he walks to the phones on the other side of the lobby to make a call to Maddie and Aunt A.

Tony walks down the street on the edge of town with his Ghost mask covering his face, a slight glow from the skin around his left eye leaking out into the night. He has his bow and arrow at hand, katana on his hip and leather armor on, Maddie beside him with her guns on her thigh and slung over a shoulder, a pair of gladii crossed over her back, a leather vest on with her arms bare.

"I've got the one on the left, across from the old bakery," he says, glancing to their right where the old Houston Texans football stadium sits crumbling to debris as it fights against the magic waves.

"I've got the stadium," she says with a nod, glancing up to the sky. "Aunt A, you reading us okay?" she asks through the radio on her hip, connected to an earpiece and throat mike.

"Loud and clear," she replies, flying on the feathered and scaled Trixie in the sky above, poised to help out whomever may need help on the ground.

Tony continues down the street as Maddie peels off into the crumbling building leaning against the outer ring of the stadium, stacked nearly five stories tall of crumbling debris. She has left her new .454 rifle at home and carrying an AR15, as they are hunting humans infected with a variant of the Immortuus pathogen tonight. There had been an outbreak in the neighborhood and the Rangers and local law enforcement had evacuated the area then posted a contract to clear the nasties from the quarantined zone. Tony had lucked out on catching the contract, but the catch is that this strain is a mutated variation, producing a more cognizant and aware undead that shares a hive mind with the other local creatures.

The contract included info on where they are concentrated, which is in two nests, one in the crumbling stadium, the other in a building across the street and a few buildings down. Being a hive mind, the plan is to hit both locations simultaneously, with Maddie taking the stadium where they suspect the higher concentration to be. Tony is entering the front of the building with the other nest as gunfire breaks out from the stadium where Maddie is radioing that she has found the nest there.

Tony has nearly no time to react as a group of a dozen of the creatures flood out of the staircase across from the open lobby of the building he enters. The creatures are still bipedal and human in appearance, though their clothes are in tatters, their feet bare and all their toes and fingers now with inch long black claws on their pale grey skin. Their eyes burn cherry red in the dimness of the night cloaked building and they move in concert, proving the control of a single consciousness among them.

Tony's breathing is even as he pulls steel arrows from his quiver and fires methodically at the group, dropping each with a single shaft through an eye socket or through their hearts. He notes that the creatures' skin is pulled tight over their frames, all the fat and softness of what used to be human had melted away as they changed into something else. The last of the creatures falls and he goes up the stairs with an arrow on the string, searching for another target.

"Alpha, Ghost," he says over the radio as he moves, using their abbreviated call signs for the mission. "Ascending west staircase, advise if any squirt from the building."

"Nothing leaving your building, though some are escaping the stadium, too many exits available," Autumn says over his earpiece, gunshots ringing through it as his Aunt fires down on those escaping.

Tony fires as a trio of creatures leap into a doorway further up the stairs, and he continues up, the other doors on the lower floors locked and jammed in place. He turns to where one of the creatures lies dead, having an arrow pierce the back of its skull, and Tony peers into the gloom more cautiously, the sound of breathing reaching his ears.

"I have live contacts," he says as he parses the sounds he is receiving. "Five people, maybe six. Top floor of the building."

"That's the fourth floor, and unlikely to be stable," Autumn comments over the radio. "How dense is the infestation there?"

"Not bad so far, but I haven't been able to do a detailed search, the second and third floors were blocked," he leans into another room as she flies carefully to the other side of the building, searching for the humans he can sense.

"The side of the building is partially crumbled and I can see in from above, not much on those floors, and not many hiding places," she says. "Wolf is hitting a heavy concentration, but no survivors."

Tony turns the final corner to the last room, where the remaining humans are, and pauses as he finds none of the infected, but knowing at least two entered the floor.

"I'm going to try and secure then move the survivors, stand by," he says, approaching the group of humans but pausing as he hears a telltale pair of beeps behind him.

He turns and looks back where he came from and only his enhanced senses allows him to make sense of the dim flashing red light over the door. He is moving before he fully recognizes what he saw, diving to the side behind the arch of the brick wall to the room next door. The small explosive over top of the door he had stepped through explodes, sending shrapnel into the room and almost instantly killing the survivors tied and blindfolded a half dozen yards away. The explosion blasts out the wall across from it and parts of the neighboring walls, sending a cloud of dust into the night sky and obscuring any view of the interior.

"TONY!" Autumn yells as she tries to get the startled Trixie back under control.

The blast from the building had been a hundred feet below them and the flier has not been trained to handle explosions nearby, and had been spooked by the sudden debris and concussive wave from the building. Autumn is able to keep her seat but the mount is now nearly a thousand feet over the ground and balks at dropping closer to the site of the explosion.

"Maddie! Tony's floor exploded! I can't see him and the damn bird won't go down," she says, fighting not to panic as she tries to bring Trixie closer to where her nephew was less than a minute ago.

"I broke my rifle and I'm almost to the roof of my building," she says over the radio, her voice flat and calm, belying what she must feeling inside.

"Alpha, this Ghost," a static filled reply comes through the channel a moment later.

"Ghost, what's your status," Maddie cuts in before Autumn can reply, allowing her a moment to cool herself.

"Managed to duck most of the blast, but lost my bow and currently hanging from a support on the south side of the building three floors up, facing the street," he replies, coughing a bit as he does. "I'm not in any shape to get down without help, and I see movement in the building, not human."

"Standby," Maddie says sharply, and Autumn can hear the loud shots from her pistol in the background as the werewolf suddenly appears on the roof of the stadium below.

Autumn is looking down as Trixie banks in the sky, Maddie firing one handed at an opponent as she slices the head off another with a gladius. She is thirty yards from the edge of the canted and crumbling roof, nearly a hundred yards away from Tony but fifty feet or so higher over the ground.

"Alpha, I need you to bank and drop your rifle into the middle of the street between me and Archer, right now," Maddie says crisply, and Autumn blinks at the command in the teenager's voice.

"What good is that going to do?" she asks, though she is already unstrapping the AR15 from the saddle holster beside her.

"Call mark when you release," Maddie says in reply, and Autumn does not argue, only banks the flying beast of burden over the street below and tosses the rifle to land in the center of the street below.

"Mark!"

Maddie is torn as she glances up at the sky when Autumn calls over the radio that she has dropped the rifle. She feels completely in her element, fighting incredible odds with sword in hand and enemies to challenge her. Torn because Tony is in trouble and even though a part of her is terrified that he is hurt and that she may be too late, the wolf within her is relishing the challenge the situation presents. She drops the mundane gladius she has in her hand and sprints to the roof's edge, the Lyc-V in her veins boosting her strength, speed and reflexes as she times her leap while picking up speed.

She launches off the crumbling ledge of the roof, arcing into the night over the street below and towards the building Tony is hanging from. She spins her arms and kicks her legs to get her body oriented right and turning as she flies through the night air, snatching the falling rifle in mid-flight as she does. The rifle is light but grabbing it causes her turn in the air to increase and she snaps her head around to keep her orientation and prevent dizziness as she continues her arc.

She lands on the remains of the third floor of the building, her knees bent and feet splayed wide as she leans back from her direction of travel, her Converse All Stars sliding on the dust and debris covered floor. She slides across the floor with one knee down at the speed of a fast run with the rifle tucked into her shoulder as she slides past five red eyed figures that are approaching the exposed iron spike Tony is hanging from. She fires quickly at the figures as she slides past, nearly emptying the magazine so fast it almost sounds like she is firing on full automatic.

Her slide has slowed to a full stop as she reaches the wall of this room ten yards away, and she leans forwards as she rises to her feet, rifle lowered as she watches her targets crumple to the ground. She walks calmly towards where Tony hangs at the edge of the building, taking deep breaths to slow her heart rate and to help ease the adrenaline out of her system. Tony is gripping a two foot long piece of iron rebar protruding from the concrete with his right hand and his left elbow hooked over it, though his left hand is bleeding and injured.

"Well, that was impressive," he says, his voice strained from working on not falling.

She sets down the rifle and leans out to help him up, "Bad luck that you got the building with a bomb in it."

"We need to hunt down the stragglers," he says with a grunt as he takes her hand with his unhurt right, letting her pick him up and place him on the solid floor, having braced herself before lifting him. "They set a trap with a bomb, we can't let them get too numerous."

"They are too smart to let them get too plentiful," she agrees as she pulls out her phone. "Time to call backup."

Tony tries not to frown too hard as Tim pulls up outside the crumbling building and stadium in an SUV. He climbs out of the oversized vehicle with four others, all dressed in sweatpants and t-shirts as well as barefoot. Timothy Domasca is the nineteen year old werewolf son of the Wolf Clan Alphas and had attempted to court Maddie not long ago. Tony dislikes him for that reason, but also because the young man is tall dark and handsome, things he never was and will never be. Worse than that is that he's intelligent and accomplished, working as a paramedic and finishing up his bachelor's degree, and Tony really does not know how Maddie ended up with him and not Tim.

The other four werewolves vary between eighteen and twenty five, and only one female in the group, but all fighters in the Clan and currently subordinate to Maddie in the hierarchy. Tony says nothing as Maddie gives them curt orders to pair up and spread out with weapons as they arm themselves with AR15s and blades. He moves to the side and out of the way as the three pairs of werewolves run off into the night. When he is alone, the others having split up to cover more ground and track down the remaining infected, he goes to the back of the SUV and pulls out the medical kit.

He unwraps the hasty bandage on his left hand, wincing at the pain in the extremely sensitive burnt portion of his body, the pain an intense reminder that he is not normal. His hand glows in the night in a kaleidoscope of colors, a visual reminder that he will never be normal again. He starts to clean out the gash left by the explosion, but his vision hazes at the pain, the adrenaline of the fight worn away.

"Let me help with that," Autumn says from where she is approaching, having landed Trixie, the feathered and scaled flying beast a dozen yards away.

Tony mentally berates himself for having missed her landing and approach, knowing that there are dangerous things out in the night and he should not let his guard down.

Tony turns and sits on the back end of the SUV as Autumn takes his hand and pulls medical gear from the trauma kit he had opened up. She pours a generous amount of cleaner over the wounds and Tony shuts his eyes against the burn of the pain, followed by the pulling and sharpness of Autumn stitching him up.

"Once the magic returns, we can have this closed up in a few minutes," Autumn says as she wraps the fully bandaged hands.

Tony sighs, "Okay."

"You shouldn't be intimidated by them," she says softly, packing away the medical gear.

"They are stronger, faster and heal at amazing speeds," he says with a frown of his own, looking down at his hand, unable to hold a blade or bow until it is healed. "Without the magic being up, I'm a liability. We should have just had them come along in the first place."

"You've got magic of your own, even when tech is in control. That is something only a very few have," Autumn admonishes him. "That and you've accomplished much in your young life, a lot of it in the last eight months. And believe it or not, that is more amazing for the fact that you are not stronger, faster or heal quickly."

Tony frowns but knows better than to argue.

"Richard reminds people constantly that it is not the beast inside shapeshifters that give them the potential to be monsters, it is the human inside of them," she continues to lecture him. "Which makes what you have done lately, assist in killing a god, defeating a fallen archangel single handedly to name a few… what makes it all the more amazing is that you didn't have Tim's strength, his speed, his healing and the other things his parents have showered him with since he was born."

Tony frowns under his mask and remains silent as Autumn completes putting the medical equipment away and turns to him with a firm expression and a pointed finger.

"Rick was that way until he took care of our father, and even afterwards he never really got past it until he was a Ranger in the army," she says meeting his gaze and forcing him to look at her. "I don't expect you to figure it out overnight, but you've been through trials as well, and you're better than you realize."

"I had to be saved by my girlfriend and her wolfpack," Tony grouses softly, looking down at his hand.

"And you saved her from an angry demigod of strength then helped save your father from the god of the sea," Autumn says to him with a disapproving scowl. "Let's not keep count, okay?"

She glances down the street where she hears gunfire, then glances at Tony, "What do you hear?"

"It sounds like Maddie and Tim found three of the infected," he says, turning his head towards the sound and closing his eyes to concentrate. "And the other groups have found trails and are on the hunt. They did a full circle of the building before taking off, so they'll have the last of the stragglers soon."

"Good," Autumn says, glancing back at where Trixie is tied to a lamp post.

"I'm going to go grab a head for proof," he says with a sigh as he stands up. "Once I have that, I'll head to the Guild to collect. Call me on the radio once they're done with the hunt and I'll have us complete this morning after I fill out all the paperwork. Then the cops and the Rangers can let people back into the neighborhood and we can get paid."

"I'll let Maddie know, she'll probably meet you at the Guild when they're done so she can fill any last details," Autumn says, patting Tony on the shoulder. "When will you be back by the shop?"

"I'll need to rest for a while after finishing at the guild," Tony says with a shake of his head. "Probably afternoon sometime."

"I'll make sure Maddie comes, we'll have a celebratory dinner," Autumn says with a smile.

"What?" Tony asks with a pause, turning to her.

"Celebratory, y'know, to celebrate?" she says with a small laugh now. "This is the biggest contract we've done, and we helped keep a neighborhood safe."

Tony sighs, "I can't say no, can I?"

"Of course not," Autumn says with a snort and shake of her head, turning and picking up her staff from where she had leaned it next to the SUV.

"Later, Aunt A," Tony says with another sigh as he turns away.

Maddie skips as she moves through the front lobby of the Mercenary Guild, humming a tune under her breath as she does. She moves across the lobby to a table next to the café and sits down across from where Tony sits, bent over a pile of forms. She smiles at the waitress who approaches to take her order, familiar as she is also in the Horde in the Rat Clan.

"Four egg meat lover's omelet with sausage and orange juice, please," she says with a nod, and the girl turns to have the food brought out.

"What was the total body count on the infected?" he asks, still writing on the forms.

"Sixty seven total, and I left Tim and the rest of my wolves to organize and bury the bodies so the 'law' won't have to risk exposure," she says with air quotes for the word.

"Good," he says with a nod, writing down the number then returning to another portion of the report. "I'll finish this then submit it, we should be able to pick up payment later today after they confirm the site is clear."

"I think you need a bigger apartment," Maddie says with a nod at him, reaching across and taking a piece of bacon from his half-finished plate of food.

"I like my apartment just fine," he says simply without looking up. "I think Ashley likes it just fine, too."

"Aunt A finished fixing Max," Maddie says. "And he's our dog, not hers. Your apartment is not big enough for him now."

"He's not a dog anymore, I think," Tony says with a frown under his mask that Maddie can sense, to which she narrows her eyes at him. "And you can just keep him at your place, I don't mind."

"But then he can't visit you or stay with you, your place is too small," she reasons against him. "Besides, I'm the one that heals fast, I think he should stay with you and Ashley in case you aren't there and something happens, or something really bad happens when you are."

Tony puts down the pen he was using and sighs into his uninjured right hand, his left still wrapped in a bandage, "Putting aside the chances of something bad getting into my heavily warded apartment, I'm there often enough to take care of her and when she's not with me she's usually with Aunt A."

"She was alone at the shop with Max while we were out on the contract, something could have happened then," Maddie points out as a glass of juice is put in front of her.

"Aunt A's place, which is just marginally more heavily warded than my own apartment, where she had a three hundred pound, trained and protective Dragon Shepherd with her," Tony says in explanation with a sigh of his own.

"If you had a bigger place she wouldn't have had to be at the shop, she could have stayed home with Max instead," she reasons to him with a toss of her head.

He sighs, "Maddie, I'm saving what I can so I can finish my certs with the Guild then start working on college work. I can't afford to break my lease, take time to move all my stuff and pay higher rent somewhere else just so I can keep my pet dragon with me."

"Don't you still have money from the New Orleans job?" she asks with a frown at him.

"I do, but it's not as much as I'd like, and with having to set up everything here it put a dent in it, and I've got a chunk earmarked for college," he continues as he reaches over to take a drink of his own apple juice.

"How much is earmarked?" she asks, tilting her head.

"Probably the same amount Aunt A made you earmark, I'd guess," he says after taking a drink through the thinner fabric over his mouth.

"I can help with the move, bring some of the Horde with me, and it'll only take a day to move, at max," she continues on. "I'm sure Rick will help, too, if you ask."

"I'm not moving," he says in a firm voice as he sets his juice down harder than necessary.

Maddie just pauses and stares at him, hearing frustration in his voice, not challenge, having learned to tell the difference recently since she's been working with other dominant shapeshifters more often.

"Okay, there's a problem here, and you need to talk to me about it," she says softly just before the waitress returns with her food.

"There's no problem, I'm fine where I'm living, Max can stay with you," he says and turns back to the paperwork. "I'm going to go turn this in."

"Dinner at Aunt A's tonight," she says to him as he drops a twenty dollar bill then turns and leaves her alone.

Richard is sitting on the rail of the Viking longboat run aground in the field in front of the Bastion, Krigsherre sticking in the plank of wood at his feet. Its early afternoon and he has a cooler at his feet as a dot in the distance grows near then resolves itself into Thor flying through the air, his hammer leading. Thor lands in the center of the ship on bent knees, a gust of air accompanying him which presses against Richard's face but does not move him or the ship.

"Greetings, Richard, Khan of the Horde," Thor says, clipping Mjolnir to his belt, wearing leather pants and scale armor with a blue vest, functional but impressive looking.

"Greetings, Thor, son of Odin," Richard says as he stands as well, wearing jeans and a black leather vest over his red t-shirt. "I have tried flying with mine, but it won't work."

"I am the god of the storm," Thor says with a shrug as Richard extends his hand and Thor takes it in a warrior's grip. "Well met, my friend. I had worried we would not be able to mend the rift between us."

Richard snorts softly, "You didn't do anything wrong, Thor. Ragnar, now Baldur, did. And if anyone is to blame for not enforcing justice, it is your father and not you."

Thor frowns in distaste and looks away, "The death of Baldur heralds the start of Ragnarok. The All-Father is sworn to prevent its coming at all costs."

"Your father is destined to fight that battle and you are meant to die to end it, Thor," Richard corrects him, his gaze firm as they release their grips. "But that is old mythology, old legends of the future. If you have conjured the Norns, I might be inclined to listen to old tales of the end of the world."

"The Norns are not manifested," Thor says with an unhappy expression. "We gain more followers and some of our friends from legend have been reborn in human form with the potential for ascension, but they are few and far from the power they once commanded."

"I wish to speak with Odin on that, and the Norns," Richard says with a nod, then gestures to the bench and the two men sit across from each other.

Richard opens the cooler and hands Thor a beer, who smiles at the offer and twists off the cap of the local brew. After they both take a pull of their drinks Richard resumes their talk.

"I don't trust your father," he says bluntly, his speech becoming similar to Thor's in cadence and word choice. "If it were you I dealt with, I would not hesitate. But he schemes more than he admits, and it worries me."

"He is responsible for all, Richard, he bears a heavy burden," Thor says in his father's defense.

"I have more land under my command than he does, I have over a thousand in my Horde and deal with the governments of all the others," Richard says with a hard tone. "I understand the weight of a crown better than anyone."

"My apologies, I know you understand," Thor says with a nod.

"Because I understand is why we are talking," Richard says with an easier breath. "I want us to remain allies, but I need assurances that what happened with Ragnar will not happen again."

"Our goal is to manifest as many as we can before the other pantheons can, you know this," Thor says, pointing with his beer.

"I do, and I don't disagree at your ends, I disagree with the means," he says with a firm tone. "The blood and sacrifices Ragnar did in secret was wrong."

"Blood magic is strong, but not inherently evil in our culture, those men who bled and died to rise Baldur from myth to life did so of their own volition, they will fight as einjenhar when Ragnarok returns," Thor says with a shake of his head and continues before Richard can interject. "But the way they acquired that wisdom, that knowledge that they did not possess, torturing and bleeding Madelyn to power the tablets and dealing with demons," he is shaking his head angrily now. " _That_ is evil, I agree."

"I need to know that the knowledge is gone," Richard says with a hard stare at Thor, who shifts uneasily.

"I do not understand, Richard, why must we lose this knowledge? The information on how to do the spell is not evil, the spell itself is not evil. Why discard it?"

"For two reasons," Richard says, holding up two fingers, counting them off. "One, do the ends justifies the means? Every Aesir or other creature from your mythos you bring here will be tainted with that darkness, just as you know Ragnar is tainted by it. Baldur is supposed to be honorable and true, a bright light for all the Aesir to aspire to, yet you saw what he did to manifest. Baldur is not the god he once was, he has a darkness inside of him that will not be banished, and the same will occur to any other that is brought back."

Thor frowns, knowing the truth in his words, then nods, "The second?"

"You don't know who you're going to get when they manifest," he says with a hard frown. "What happens if you get Loki and Hel back to back? As you said, you don't have the Norns, so you don't know if the future you had before is the future you have now. This time the darkness could rule, an easy and tempting path for many in these hard times."

"I would not see us fall from being a shining example of honor to live up to and exemplify, just to be bullies and dictators," Thor says with another frown. "I shall talk to my father on it."

"He's already listening," Richard says, pointing to the raven on the mast.

"Then I have a personal matter to ask you on," Thor says, his face somber.

"I said go away!"

Tony jolts awake from the sound of Ashley's voice in the living room, his sword halfway out from its scabbard as he sits up in bed, the dream he'd been having dispelled instantly by the adrenaline now in his system. He takes a breath to steady his breathing and extend his senses to find out what has put the anger and hint of fear in the young girl's voice. He sheathes his sword and stands with a deep breath to slow his heart rate as he recognizes Thor's voice through the front door.

"I am a friend of Anthony's, little one," he says in his deep baritone, his tone meant to be friendly, but his size and demeanor intimidating to Ashley.

Tony pulls a t-shirt from the pile on his dresser, pulling it over his head while juggling his sword, his hand healed before he went to sleep when the magic returned to the world. He makes a relaxing, calming gesture to Ashley as he walks into the living room from his bedroom.

"It's okay, Ashley, he's a friend," Tony says, though mentally he amends that it is still shaky after the events of a few weeks ago.

He checks the peephole even though he recognizes Thor's scent, and can see the tall man standing on the other side in jeans, white t-shirt and a dark blue leather vest, hammer hanging from his belt and a large chest held in front of him. Tony opens the door with more than a touch of curiosity as to what is in the chest.

"Hey, Thor," Tony says, a puzzled frown on his face. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you, Anthony, son of Richard," Thor says in an even more formal tone than usual, a serious expression on his face. "I pray I did not interrupt anything."

"I was sleeping, I had a contract last night," Tony says, glancing behind him at the window, noting its afternoon and he had gotten six hours of sleep or so.

"May we speak?" Thor asks, his tone still formal, and Tony notes a slight hint of anxiousness in his voice.

"Yeah," Tony says with a deep breath. "But Ashley's not really good around most people yet, and I just woke up."

"I can return another time, if you wish," Thor says, and Tony mentally shakes his head. The Norse god of thunder is being extremely polite on his doorstep with a giant chest in his hands, his mind boggles at turning him away.

"No, just give me a few minutes and I'll meet you on the roof, okay?" Tony says after a moment of thought.

"Thank you, Khanson," Thor says with a shallow bow then turns and walks down the corridor with the chest towards the stairs.

Tony closes the door and pauses as he looks at the ground, his mind catching up with the absurdity of the scenario that just occurred.

"Who is he?" Ashley asks quietly from her nest of blankets in the other room, knowing full well that Tony can hear her just fine.

"An old friend," Tony says with a real shake of his head, walking into the living room. "You were right not to let him in. That was smart of you."

"What does he do?" she asks, slowly emerging from the blankets, a dagger clutched in her hands.

"He's…" he pauses in mid step to his bedroom, intending to put on jeans and a vest with his sword before going up to the roof. "He's in charge of the NeoVikings in town, along with his father. We used to hang out, a little while ago, but some of his friends hurt Maddie, and we haven't talked since then."

"What happened to the guy who hurt Maddie?" Ashley asks, her tone showing concern as he dresses in his room.

"It's complicated," Tony says simply. "That was the night I met you."

"Oh," she says, only understanding the basics of what happened that night.

"I shouldn't be long, I think," he says as he walks back into the living room clothed in shirt, jeans and boots. "Don't let anyone in while I'm gone, okay?"

"Okay," she says with a nod as he pulls a leather vest from a rack, then a quiver and bow out of habit, knowing he needs to get a better bow from the guild this afternoon after they get paid.

Tony emerges pensively through the roof entrance with his bow in hand and sword on his hip to find Thor standing near the edge of the roof, looking out at the city. Thor turns from the city with a solemn expression on his face, his dirty blond hair only partially tied back on his head.

"Anthony, son of Richard, thank you for speaking with me," Thor says with a shallow bow, and Tony awkwardly returns it, more than a little freaked out to get this kind of treatment from a god.

"Look, Thor," Tony says after a deep breath. "I know you weren't around when Ragnar did his thing, and I know you don't like how things went down. I don't blame you for it."

"I am glad to hear that, Anthony," Thor says with a nod of his head and a look of relief on his face. "I consider you a friend, and would hate our friendship to suffer from the acts of another."

Tony takes another breath, more from the memory of what happened that night which drove a wedge between the NeoVikings and the Horde. After a slight pause, during which Tony is pushing away dark memories, Thor turns and gestures to the chest.

"Nonetheless, I do believe you deserve recompense for the actions that night," he says, bending down and opening the clasp on the chest with an iron key. "He was one of my people, and he wronged you, not just in his actions against someone you hold dear, but in putting you in a position to kill those you counted as friends and brothers."

Tony's jaw clenches at the mention of what he had to do that night, to kill the two Vikings who taught him how to fight and had fought side by side with.

"Before that night, you were on a contract with Madelyn, and slew a dragon," he continues, and turns from the chest, presenting its contents to Tony.

"I negotiated with the Khan shortly thereafter and he permitted me to fashion weapons and armor from its body," he says as he gestures to the now open chest. "Behold the results of the ceaseless toils by our greatest craftsmen, and enchantment from the All-Father himself."

Within the chest is a beautifully and masterfully crafted recurve bow, the string silver in the sunlight with runes etched along the entire length. It is made primarily from what looks like bone that has a dark green hue to it and striations of green lines through it, a dark green laminated handle and accents along its length. Beside the bow are bundles of arrows of dark green wood and tipped with black bone like material as the bow, fletched with sharp feathers in green, red, blue and black.

"The bow is enchanted nearly as heavily as Mjolnir or Krigsherre, and if struck with anything less powerful, will not break and the string will not snap," Thor says as Tony approaches the chest. "Its name is DrageBein, or Dragon Bone in English, and is my gift to you, Anthony, if you will accept my apology for the actions of the one who was once a mortal king but is now my brother, Baldur. A warrior should never be forced to kill those who are his brothers, and no words, actions or gifts can repair that damage. Though I shall try to amend it."

Tony stares at the exquisite bow and arrows in the box, tentatively reaching down to touch the stiff yet soft feathers of the arrows, finally finding his voice after a pause.

"What are the arrows?" he asks, studying the details of the bone headed arrows.

"Enchanted darkwood shafts and dragon teeth for the heads, nearly as strong as DrageBien, and the tips enchanted to burn for red, shock for green and ice for blue. The black are made to pierce any hide or armor," Thor says solemnly.

Tony rises from the chest shaking his head and turning to Thor, "This is too much, I'm not worth something like this. I'm just a human, a merc."

Thor tilts his head with a slightly puzzled expression, stepping forward and placing a large hand on Tony's much shorter shoulder.

"You are warrior, Anthony, young, it is true, but I saw you in battle when we fought the Greek witch at the edge of the sea, and challenge a god as powerful as I with only Madelyn at your side to aid you," Thor says solemnly as he looks down at Tony, holding his nervous gaze.

"I'm just a human," Tony says nervously, shaking his head. "I'm not a shapeshifter like my dad or Maddie, or a powerful witch like Aunt A, or a god of thunder like you," he says with a shake of his head again.

Thor smirks now, a bemused tone as he gently chastises the young man, "You think that makes you less than us, because of that? I say nay, _that_ is what makes you mighty. When facing gods and monsters you did not shy from battle nor hesitate to help your friends and family when they needed aide. You have true courage, because you have fear and weakness, a courage that I will never know or possess."

"I don't know about that," Tony says with a sigh and shake of his head.

"I have lived a long time, Anthony, trust me that you do," Thor says with a firm nod. "Please, take this gift. I have been forced to battle my brother Loki oft enough to understand your struggle with your actions, and I would see you compensated in some way for that burden."

Tony sighs, "You're not going to let me say no, are you?"

Thor smiles at Tony, "I will continue to insist until you submit to acceptance. And I will live far longer than you, so I mean it when I say that I will pester you unto the day you die to accept."

Tony smirks at the joke, "Okay. I accept."

"Good," Thor says heartily with a pat Tony's shoulder, nearly knocking him over with his six and half feet of solid and enhanced muscle. "Now to find Madelyn and present her with her gift," he says as he turns from Tony and rubs his hands together with a grin.

"Although I have no rightly idea what you got her, I am certain you won't have to coax her to accept it," Tony says with a smirk, rubbing his now sore shoulder.

"That is why I approached you first, I knew you would be the tougher battle," Thor says with a grin at him, placing his hands on his hips in triumph.

Tony walks into Aunt A's shop in the early evening, the sun low on the horizon, pulling his mask off as he enters, new bow and arrows on his back. Maddie and Aunt A are at the front counter with Autumn behind on a stool and Maddie to the front, both with a cup of tea in hand. Maddie bounds up from her stool with barely contained glee as Tony enters with a ring of bells, spreading her arms so he can see what she is wearing.

Thor had not told him what his gift to Maddie was, but now he can see that it is a long leather vest that reaches down past her hips, splitting to allow for freedom of movement of her legs and arms. It is covered with dark green scales that are outlined in a darker green, the scales looking similar to obsidian in their reflectiveness and almost looking poured onto her torso. He recalls that the Jabberwocky they killed had that exact style of hide and he nods in appreciation of the vest as she then pulls out a short dagger of a black material.

"So, Thor brought me a pair of daggers made of the Jabberwocky's fangs," she says, displaying the hand length teeth affixed to exquisite Norse handles with runes encrusted in them. "And the vest, which he says will shift when I shift to fit my torso in all my forms, human, wolf and warrior, once I get a warrior form."

"That's pretty awesome," Tony says with a nod and a tight smile, rubbing his head as he walks up to her.

"What did you get?" she asks excitedly, putting the blade away, her gladius over one shoulder.

Tony pulls the bow from his shoulder and holds in in front of him, "DrageBien, or Dragon Bone, an enchanted bow from the same dragon. He says it's practically indestructible, so I can stop having to spend five hundred dollars a week to replace my bow."

"Ooooohhh," Maddie says as she stares at the bow and shimmering string with awe. "I think you got the better deal."

"I don't know why," he says with a frown. "You were the one that got kidnapped."

"You both received gifts worthy of the Aesir," Autumn says firmly from the desk, making both the younger folks turn to her. "Items of rarity and power that are akin to Mjolnir. Think hard on that, young ones. Those daggers will never dull, Maddie, and will pierce any armor or hide, he said. I presume the same of the arrows he gifted Tony with. You have both been given legendary weapons from the gods themselves… be humbled by that fact, and strive to live up to their worth."

"Thanks for the buzzkill, Aunt A," Maddie mutters somberly.

"They are not shiny new trinkets or baubles, or some new fad that may go out of style," she reminds them firmly. "Krigsherre is Rick's now for life, it comes when he calls for it, and none but Odin can take it from him. Just as my staff and tablets are not something I can toss away or sell, even if I wanted to. When the gods of olde did what Thor did for you, it started a tale of fate, and not all of them ended well. I'm not saying that doom and darkness lie ahead, just that sunshine and rainbows aren't guaranteed. There's still work and obstacles ahead."

"I understand," Tony says solemnly, and Maddie repeats after him with a nod.

"Good," she says with a smile now. "Now, enough for seriousness, and let me see that bow and the arrows, I wanna see if we can split a hair with it."

Richard is sitting at his desk in Hoffman Resources when there is a knock at his door and he looks up to find Tasha standing there, a pensive expression on her face as she closes the door behind her. Richard sighs and sets down the folder he had been reading from and leans back in his chair, watching his wife carefully as she sits down across from him with a slight frown.

"Am I going to need a drink?" he asks, frowning as well.

"I think we might have a problem in the Wolf Clan," she says with a frown.

Richard raises his hands and rubs his face, "Its Maddie and Tony, right?"

"There's rumors going around that it isn't right that step-siblings should be dating like they are," she says with a disapproving frown. "And that her working with Autumn is disruptive to her development as a future leader within the Wolf Clan and the Horde."

Richard fights not to growl as he closes his eyes, mentally picturing the Domascas and him ripping them to pieces. After a moment of silence he opens his eyes and looks across at his wife and mate, as well as the other leader of the Horde.

"We knew something like this might crop up when she agreed to become part of Wolf," he says with a tight frown and a sigh. "If it brews into a conflict that escalates beyond what the Domascas can handle, I interfere. If not, then it's on Maddie to figure it out."

"Maddie's not as in on the social side of the Clan," Tasha says with a sigh of her own. "She gets the warriors and the straight up dominance games, having dealt with it in the Agoge, but she's blind to the social side. She probably won't see it coming."

"As much as I love her and know she's capable, she's not good enough to take on Thomas," Richard says with a frown and shake of his head. "And Bridgette will not let it get physical if she's confronted, she's too smart for that. She'll have a spell ready or ensure the female Beta is nearby to confront Maddie, and I don't know who would win that fight, to be honest. Leslie did tryout for the Agoge and got cut about halfway through."

"And if Maddie won, she's not ready to be a Beta, yet," Tasha says with a shake of her head.

"Not just that, but she's still too fresh from the Agoge," Richard says with a frown and rubs his forehead. "There's a time period after someone graduates Ranger School that they feel invincible, on top of the world because of what they've accomplished. It gives a big shot of confidence that's hard to explain. I designed the Agoge to be the same, and what she's gone through after hasn't exactly dimmed her confidence."

"You're saying she won't back down," Tasha says with a thoughtful frown.

He sighs, shaking his head, "I don't know. She's smart, but doesn't have the experience yet."

"We'll talk to her at dinner this weekend," she says with a shrug.

"Hopefully nothing blows up until then," he says with a nod of his own.

"You just jinxed us, you know," she says with a frown and a tilt of her head.

"Thanks, because mentioning that didn't make it worse," he says dryly.

Tony is cleaning dishes with Autumn, Maddie having left to go back to her place, Tony on cleaning duty since he did not cook the meal, but arrived afterwards. They work together in companionable silence for a few minutes before Autumn speaks in a bland tone.

"So, you going to tell me what's bothering you?" she asks, and he just frowns, shifting his shoulders while he dries the cooking pan.

"You've been off the last week or so, and you have a bad vibe on you today, especially," she continues with a patient sigh. "You can brood all you want, but you're not leaving here until you talk."

He frowns hard at that, glancing at her sideways, "You sound like my mom."

"Goddess, how did I end up with kids?" Autumn says theatrically to the sky. "I mean, I've been good, I make my sacrifices, paid my taxes. Why me?"

Tony frowns uncomfortably, "Sorry. It's just weird, is all. I don't know why Maddie likes me, and then Thor laid it on heavy this afternoon. It's just overwhelming, is all. I mean, I know I'm pretty good at what I'm doing, I've been learning a lot, but there's so much I don't know, and these certifications have really driven that home."

"You feel like the weak link," she says with a tight smile. "I understand. You've been through a lot, but you're still only seventeen. Trust me when I say you will figure this out, you just have to keep at it."

Tony sighs, setting down a plate and hanging his head with his eyes closed tight for a moment, "I just don't want to let anyone down. And more just keeps piling up."

Autumn rubs her hand sympathetically on his back, across his shoulders, "I know it can be hard, but you can't let it keep you down. Raise your head, buckle down and push on. And there's plenty of good things happening to you, too, remember that."

Tony takes a steadying breath, then nods with a tight smile, "I do have a hot girlfriend and a great family."

"See, more than just a silver lining," she says to him with a smirk. "It could be whole lot worse, as you well know. You did save Ashley from growing up without a family. And you've helped a lot of people since you got here."

Tony takes a firmer breath and nods, "Okay. I'll try harder."

Autumn smiles at him and pats his back, "And talk to Maddie about the apartment thing. I think you're overreacting."

"Aaargh," he says as he looks at the ceiling. "I've only been living there a little while and just got things settled in. I like being close to the shop and it's the right size for me and Ashley."

"Maddie has a key and is there visiting a lot, you two share a dragon/dog and Jocelyn likes to visit, too. Not to mention we seem to keep acquiring stuff for the shop that I can't have here," Autumn points out. "Just think about it."

Tony takes a breath and shakes his head, "Fine, I'll think about it."

Autumn shakes her head and starts putting away the dishes, knowing she cannot fix everything at once.

Richard looks up from his late dinner at his cabin as Autumn walks into his kitchen. He glances at the dark of the night outside, it nearly midnight and back at her.

"Drink?" he asks, rising from his seat.

"Beer, please," she says with a sigh as she sets down a backpack by the archway. "And I'm crashing here for the night after we talk. Atticus is going to handle the store tomorrow morning."

"That didn't sound ominous at all," Richard says as he pulls two beers from the fridge and hands her an opened one. "What's up, sis?"

" _Your_ almost adult children," she says with a sigh, taking a deep pull of the beer then setting it down with a thunk. "Maddie is a storm everywhere she goes, sweeping everything in her path, and Tony is living in everyone's shadow."

"They wanted space, and I can't stop them," Richard says with a frustrated sigh of his own. "Tony was never mine to tell what to do in the first place, and he's only technically my son by blood, though the government has no idea and only Horde members know, though that's getting thin. And after the Agoge there was no way in hell I was going to be able to hold Maddie back from attacking the world after everything she'd been through."

Autumn puts the beer down from where she'd been taking another drink, "They are doing good, but they don't have the experience to cope, yet. Tony feels swamped and I'm worried Maddie's going to bite off more than she can chew, which we both know can be fatal in the shapeshifter community."

"I can't put the genie back in the bottle, no matter how much I wish I could, no matter how much I agree with you," he says with a sigh of his own. "I got them both late and I did my best, am still doing my best. I've got some of my people checking on them both periodically to make sure I don't lose track of them, and I'm exerting as much influence as I can in the Horde to cover Maddie's back on that end."

"It doesn't help that they seemed to have picked up your stubbornness in so short a time," Autumn says with a frown at him, then taking another drink.

"I'm not the only one they hang out around, so don't just look at me, look in the mirror, too," he says with a frown of his own and leaning back, swirling his beer in front of him.

After a moment of strained silence, Richard breaks it with a sigh.

"All things considered, I don't think we did too bad," he says with a shrug. "You remember what Maddie was like when we found her…"

Autumn frowns but nods as he trails off, "She was terrified, comatose, practically. I didn't think she'd pull out of it that first week, but damn if she didn't surprise me. I didn't realize she'd be so resilient."

"And Tony traveled halfway across the continent with nothing but the clothes on his back, a backpack of gear and fifty bucks," Richard continues with a snort and a smile. "I had never met the kid, but damn if that's something I woulda done at his age."

"Did a lot of stuff similar to it, that's for sure," Autumn agrees with a sigh and nod of her own. "Aren't we supposed to make things easier for them than it was for us?"

"Who helped us figure life out when I finally kicked pops out of the picture?" Richard asks with a raised eyebrow. "We only had ourselves to help each other out, and mom was a shadow. We didn't have a safety net, and it was no less dangerous then. No training, no gear, no money and no help."

"Your zen is annoying, little brother," Autumn with a frown at him, taking another drink of her beer.

"One of my Ranger instructors used to say," he smirks, then takes on a serious tone. " 'Stop whining, cupcake. It don't help, and nobody cares'," he chuckles afterwards.

"I'm guessing you cleaned that up some," Autumn says with a tight smile.

"A lot."

She sighs, "Talk to them, please. They both need more than just me trying to guide them through the rocks and shoals of life."

"Planning on it this weekend at the family dinner," he says with a nod. "I've got too much on my plate to make time for Tony before then, and Mischa, who Maddie is more likely to listen to, is bogged down handling more of the Cat Clan stuff because Mitchell is working on security so hard."

Autumn sighs, "So, it's hard everywhere."

Richard chuckles, "Ain't it always?"

Tony walks up to Maddie's door, a small bouquet of flowers he'd picked on the way over in his hand, purple wildflowers that he'd thought smelled nice. He starts to pull out his keys, but stops when he hears her on the other side of the door, unlocking it. He smiles at her, his mask tucked in his belt, and she grins at him as she sees what he brought her.

"I'll get something to put them in," she says with a smile as she takes them then pecks him on the cheek, turning to the small kitchen in the single wide trailer.

He smiles at her, taking a deep breath to try and relax, walking to the couch and sitting down after removing his weapons belt, bow and arrows. He drops his head back and just exhales as he tries to relax, Maddie sitting next to him in sweatpants and t-shirt, tucking her legs under her.

"You okay?" she asks, leaning against his right side, her breath on his jaw.

"I am now," he says with another sigh then scoots down on the couch and leans his head against hers. "Can we just stay like this for, like, a month or so?"

Maddie laughs lightly as she wraps her arms around his right arm, intertwining her fingers in his, "Sounds like a plan. A good spur of the moment plan."

"It lacks detail is what you mean," he says in teasing voice.

"Well, how would we eat, go to the bathroom, other stuff like that?" she says with a laugh.

"Thank you for ruining the moment," he says with a laugh of his own, turning his head to kiss her on the forehead and inhale the scent of her hair. "I do like this, though."

"You should come over more often, and we could," she says with a smile, tilting her head to give him a kiss on the lips. "Or move closer, maybe. It is getting cramped in your apartment."

Tony makes a frustrated sound and drops his head back again, and Maddie rubs her hand on his chest.

"I'm thinking about it, okay? Aunt A brought it up, and I said I'd think about it, okay?" he says with a deep breath, shaking his head and closing his eyes.

Maddie takes a breath and lets it go, "Okay, as long as you're thinking about it."

They sit in silence for a few minutes, neither saying anything as they cuddle on the couch until Tony speaks up.

"Are you expecting anyone?" he asks, not moving his head from where it is leaned against hers.

"No, why?" she says, frowning in thought, not moving either.

"You have four people coming to the front, all werewolves from the scents," he says.

Now Maddie makes a frustrated noise, "I swear to God, if I knew how annoying they would be, I would have stayed in Cat."

Tony frowns in sympathy, one of the reasons she had moved out was because after being in the Agoge she had a hard time dealing with people hovering around. The Bastion has simply been too crowded for her, hence her buying the trailer and small patch of land. She sighs and rises from the couch, reaching the door as the werewolves do, unlocking it and opening it.

"Yes, Marshall," she says to the male werewolf in the front of the group of two males and two females.

Marshall is in his late twenties with short brown hair and fit physique on his six foot frame, he helps work the security portion of Clan Wolf, assigning out the wolves to tasks from the Clan Alphas and Betas for the Clan and the Horde.

"Grab your stuff, we got a job," he says tersely.

"I have a job, Marshall," she says flatly in reply, not moving from the doorway. "And I actually have to be there in a couple hours, so I can't help you with yours."

"That's not how it works, kid," he says with a growl at her, his eyes flashing blue for a moment. "We call, you answer, until you get seniority."

Maddie frowns at him, "I am really not up for this right now. I'll take a rain check, okay. Go tell the Beta or whoever that I'm not jumping through hoops for some stupid power play. I have a real job, and I can't just skip it."

"Check that attitude or I'll check it for you," he growls at her, pointing his finger at her.

Tony can hear Maddie sigh from where he is still sitting on the couch, looking relaxed but ready to grab his gear and help if needed.

"Everything cool, hon?" he asks blandly, his senses stretched and aware of what's going on.

"Yeah, I got this," she says.

Before Marshall can disagree, Maddie has grabbed his pointed finger and jerked it hard, down and to the side, breaking the joint. Marshal gives an angry shout in response, and Maddie lands a vicious right elbow to the older man's jaw. The powerful strike on the nerve cluster while the jaw was open immediately sends Marshall into unconsciousness, and his body stiffens as he falls backward onto the cobbled walk to the door.

"Drag your buddy out of here, unless you guys are looking for a piece?" she asks, her own Alpha stare locked in place with a flash of her eyes, seeming to be much larger than her just over five foot frame would suggest.

They had bristled at the exchange, but her unquestioning victory and establishment of dominance have them instinctively looking away, and she turns from them, shutting and locking the door behind her.

"Is that going to bite you later?" he asks, not moving from the couch as she flops down next to him and curls into his side again as he can hear the wolves leave outside.

"Probably, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it," she says with a sigh. "I mean, seriously, it's like none of these guys have ever learned to fight in the real world. I'm insulted they think they can just snarl at me and I'll just shrink into line."

"Well, if they're used to folks who will, then they've gotten used to being top wolf with not a lot of competition," Tony says with a shrug. "Monday you're going to have an issue, though, isn't that petition day for the Clan?"

"Yeah, and Mr. Domasca is out of town dealing with a wolf pack we brought into the Horde during the expansion, so it's only Mrs. Domasca at the top, right now," Maddie says with a sigh.

"We have a couple hours until we have to be at Aunt A's shop to pick up the flyers to distribute out," he says as he lifts his arm and wraps it around her.

"Let's just hang out for a bit then," she says with a lazy smile, leaning up and kissing him.

Tony is relieved that it is finally Saturday and he actually has the day off with no tests for certifications, no immediate studying to do, no contracts, just working out this morning and now practicing with the new bow. He shoots the black feathered arrow at the thick stump of wood, three feet deep, and he blinks when the arrow sinks in more significantly than he had thought it would. Instead of firing another shot, he walks the fifty yards to get a better and closer look at the results of his shot, even though he can see it pretty well from where he was.

Sure enough, the arrow is buried nearly a foot in, an amazing feat considering its hard oak he had fired into. If he had put up a simple target of layered plywood and paper it would have gone straight through. He pulls the arrow out with difficulty and stares at the bone tipped arrow, the edge still sharp in the mid-day light.

"That's an impressive bow," Richard says as he walks up, still fifty yards away, but Tony had heard him approach and his words are clear, even at this distance.

"It was a gift from Thor, because of what happened to the Ragnarsons," Tony says with a twist of his head.

"I know, I spoke with him this week about that, as well as the resumption of our alliance," Richard says as they close the distance to each other. He catches the tossed arrow, careful to touch only the shaft, and he studies the sharpened dragon tip intently, then the feathers.

"It's impressive," he says with a nod, handing the arrow back. "I'm glad you stopped by today, I wanted to talk to you, see how things have been."

He tilts his head to the side of the target range located near the Bastion, Tony having come by after his morning workout to practice and bring Ashley to hang out with Jocelyn, someone more her own age, and spending the night. Tony follows him as they start to walk around the sparsely wooded area around the Bastion, the range located outside.

"It's been…" he searches for the word. "It's been interesting, I guess."

"I've wanted to talk with you," Richard says uneasily, gesturing with his hands. "About what you're doing with Autumn and Maddie, at the store, and just what your plans are in general."

Tony shrugs, "I don't know, I'm just kind of playing it by ear, I guess. Things happened so quickly when I got here, and things just kinda fell into place since then."

Richard frowns not in displeasure, but in thought while glancing to the side and stopping after a few steps, causing Tony to stop and turn to him.

"When I was your age everything I did was driven by my need to protect and provide for my sisters and my mother," he says with a pensive expression. "When I joined the Army, after my mother died and my sisters were self-sufficient, it was because I was looking for a purpose, a reason to fight. I found it, in the men I fought beside."

"But didn't they betray you?" Tony asks with a frown, remembering what he had been told of his background.

"They did, and afterwards when I came to Texas… I was lost," he admits with a shrug and a frown, glancing around at the patch of grass and sparse trees nearby, the wall of the Bastion a hundred yards away. "In complete honesty, I was drifting, a soldier with no nation, no reason to fight, just staying afloat, working. And that's when I got infected and met Tasha. She gave me purpose, her and the Horde."

He had been looking into the distance as he spoke, but now he turns to Tony and locks eyes with him, "I don't say this to intimidate you, or anything like that. I only wonder why you do what you do? Once you figure out why you are on the path you walk, and you commit to it, it makes things easier, clearer."

Tony thinks on that for a long moment, "Is that what happened to you?"

"I thought I was good and had a reason when I had been in the Army for only a few months, but then I went to the Regiment and realized I was better than I had ever thought," he replies with a nod. "The sense of purpose and the training I got there is what made the difference. You've been trained and you're getting more, now you just need to find your purpose."

Tony sighs, reaching up and rubbing his head on the unburnt side, though covered with a mask to protect his skin from the sunlight.

"It would have been harder, if I hadn't come here, wouldn't it?" he asks, looking at Richard levelly.

"Probably," Richard agrees with a nod. "Although I won't lie and say it would have been just as dangerous. Being near me tends to turn up the danger levels."

Tony snorts at that, nodding, "It does. But I'm still glad I came."

"I am, too," Richard says, patting him on the shoulder and leading him to the Bastion's walls. "Is Maddie coming today? I need to talk to her."

"I don't think so," Tony says with a shake of his head. "She said she had errands to take care of for Aunt A and we were going to meet at her place for dinner. It's our, uh, date night."

Richard grins at his uncomfortableness, "I won't intrude or try to keep you, then."

"Thanks, dad," Tony says with a sigh of relief.

Tony grins as he walks up the walk to Maddie's house, Max sitting in the sun outside next to the front steps, lolling his head at his approach. The dragon shepherd rolls to its feet with a wag of its big tail and trots up to Tony happily. Tony pulls out a stick of beef jerky he had brought for this purpose and has Max sit, lay down and roll over before giving him the treat then giving him a quick pet.

He walks up to the door and walks in, it having been unlocked by arrangement, what with the guard dragon on the stoop, pulling off his mask. Tony smiles as he walks inside, Maddie across the small kitchen in a red sundress and barefoot as she moves around cooking. He pauses to just watch her for a moment, enjoying the way she moves, then removes his weapons and equipment until he is only in his jeans and t-shirt.

"We are having sautéed chicken in a sweet red wine, mushrooms and a touch of lemon sauce," she says as he walks up behind her, swaying to the radio playing. Tony wraps his arms around her from behind as she pauses in front of the stove, stirring a set of pans laid out and heating.

"Looks like rice and green beans for the sides?" he asks, resting his chin on her shoulder and enjoying her scent before turning his head and kissing the crook of her jaw and neck.

"Mmmm," Maddie says happily. "Save that for later, you're distracting me."

Tony laughs then kisses the side of her head and she turns enough to give him a solid kiss, then turns back to cooking.

"Has Max been fed?" he asks, going to the fridge and pulling out a beer, popping off the top.

"I was hoping you would handle that, so I wouldn't have to handle his meat and our food simultaneously," she says as she give him a sweet grin.

"In the cooler in the shed?" he asks, her having described where she stored his food.

"Yep, it's a premade concoction, lamb and chicken with rice and some other stuff," she says, turning and leaning now on the counter, still smiling as Tony stares at the thin straps that hold up the dress around her neck. "Go," she says with a laugh, turning away again. "I wrote down how much, in case others have to feed him, go."

Tony smiles and goes outside where Max is rising again, since Tony has come out, walking to the walk in shed a half dozen yards behind the trailer. He hums to himself as he sets down his beer and scoops out the chunked and mixed meal from the barrel in the cooled corner of the shed, insulated with a magic and electronic cooling unit. He finishes filling the large plastic bowl, then slides it into the microwave to heat it up, a metal grill next to it for when the magic is up and they would heat it with a magic flame.

He takes a few pulls of his beer while waiting, and when it dings finished, he pulls out the steaming mixture, looking a lot like a bowl of meat heavy stew, and goes outside where Max is sitting and waiting. Max's tail is wagging as he waits, and after having him stay before being fed, Tony gives him permission to eat. He waits until he has finished the meal, then returns to the shed, uses the utility sink to clean the bowl then puts it away. He finishes by filling Max's water bowl in the front yard, then returns inside to wash his own hands.

He pauses to find that Maddie has set up a small folding table in the open space between her kitchen and the living room where her couch is. There is a red and white plaid table cloth covering it with two place settings, food arrayed on it, a pair of candles and the wild flowers he had brought the other day.

"Hey there, handsome," Maddie practically purrs, her brown hair styled and accenting her eyes and mouth, the red dress drifting around her lean figure to her mid-thigh with a halter top style tied behind her neck.

Tony pauses, lost for words as his brain tries to catch up with his very seventeen year old body. After a failed attempt to speak, he manages to swallow and talk.

"I would like to remind you that I have never had a girlfriend before and have no idea how this works," he says, trying to fake confidence until his heart slows down. "Let me wash my hands," he adds, remembering that he had just fed Max.

After a pause he walks to the sink and washes his hands, focusing too much on it and knowing without a doubt he is completely out of his depth.

"How did the bow perform?" Maddie asks from where she has gone to the fridge, pulling out a bottle of chilled wine, then a pair of glasses.

"The black feathered arrow sank a full foot into a solid block of hardwood from fifty yards," he says with a nod. "It'll kill an SUV engine block from a hundred or more, I'd wager."

"So, now you have something to rival my .454s," she says with a smile, and he finishes drying his hands and goes to the table as she sets down the bottle and glasses.

"My lady," he says with a smile as he pulls her chair out for her, and she sits with a grin at him.

"For having no experience, I have to say, you're doing pretty good so far," Maddie says as Tony walks to the other side of the table, only three feet between them, and sits.

"Mom raised me right," Tony says with a shrug. "I don't know what other guys you dated did, I can only do me, I guess."

"That sounds good to me," Maddie says, holding up her glass as Tony pours the chilled Moscato sweet wine into her glass then his.

"It feels weird, though, drinking wine over a candle lit dinner," Tony admits, looking at the glass ruefully. "Especially since we're both underage."

"Not in this house," Maddie says with a grin, sipping her wine.

Tony nods, sipping his own and surprised at the strong taste against his over sensitive tongue.

"Too sweet?" Maddie asks, a flash of concern on her face.

"No, just not used to it, that's all," he says with a tight smile. "Prayers?"

They both bow their heads and say their own separate prayers then when they both finish Tony reaches out to place food on Maddie's plate and then his own. As he finishes setting his down Maddie giggles from her side, shaking her head.

"What?" he asks, wondering if he did something wrong.

"We're adulting, I think," she says with a grin.

Tony chuckles, then nods, "Yes, I think we are. How did this happen?"

Tony lies in the darkness of Maddie's bedroom, her warmth curled into his side as she sleeps soundly in his arms. This evening had been an eye opener for him, culminating with his first experience making love, ever. It had not been exactly a long experience, not at first, but the second and third time were much longer, thanks to Maddie's help. Oddly enough he does not feel self-conscious about it, but relieved, this being a thing guys he grew up with talked about, and the men he has trained with joke about. He now wonders why they would joke about it, but pushes that from his mind as he gently strokes her bare shoulder, the two of them covered in a sheet in the summer night.

Tony and Maddie ride together on Tony's horse, Maddie pressed against his back and looking over his shoulder as they ride at the ground eating gait of the large dark warhorse. Max is trotting at the horse's side, easily keeping pace and wearing a thin leather harness over his torso, his neck not capable of holding a collar.

"You know that everyone is going to smell that we slept together last night," he says, not really in a questioning tone, his mask on in the afternoon light.

"And Aunt A has a sixth sense, so she'll know," Maddie says in agreement.

Tony shifts slightly, a tad nervous.

Maddie laughs lightly at his consternation, "Relax. I hate to say it's happened before, which _I_ deeply regret, and Rick hated him, whereas he likes you. It'll be fine."

"May I ask what happened?" he asks, curious.

"Rick didn't do anything," she says with a shrug that makes her body do interesting things while pressed to his t-shirt clad back, his gear strapped on the horse. "You actually beat him up more than Rick ever did."

"Oh, him," he says with a nod of understanding.

"Which, I would like to say was an awesome feat of dancing on your part," she says, teasing him because he had said he couldn't dance.

"I enjoyed the dancing before that and after that much more," he says with a chuckle of his own.

"And last night," she adds, leaning forward and kissing the scarred half of his face through the mask.

Tony is grinning like an idiot, glad the sentries on the gate to the Bastion cannot see it as they ride to the family dinner.

Maddie is in the barn, sitting on the gate of Trixie's paddock, stroking the big flying animal's head as it croons, its tooth fill beak lying across her thighs. She looks up and smiles as Mischa enters the barn, a wan smile on her face as she approaches with a beef bone in her hand.

"Max loved the one we gave him, and I know Trixie likes them, as well," Mischa says, handing the bone to Maddie, who keeps it from the purple scaled and feathered beast who leans back from the opening.

Maddie holds it up with a command to hold, and the flying predator eyes the bone intensely, waiting. Maddie throws it up a little and tells her to catch, at which point Trixie snaps the bone out of the air and starts to chew on it.

"Got a minute?" Mischa asks, gesturing deeper into the barn.

"More than, looks like," she says with a sigh, hopping from the gate and walking to a hay bale to sit. "And I need it, the wolves are driving me crazy and I'm real close to killing a couple of them."

"That would be unpolitic," Mischa observes dryly.

"I know, and I know you know about this stuff a lot more than I do," she says with a big nod. "I'm trying to figure out how to do this without getting into too big a fight."

"It's not just the fight, it's what comes after," Mischa amends, sitting on a bale as well. "If you beat someone, you then have their job. So if the female Beta tries to discipline you, and you beat her and kill her, then you are the Beta."

"I sooooo don't want to be the Beta," Maddie says with a theatrical shiver. "Mrs. Domasca creeps me out, and I have no idea how to do all the stuff I know they must do, not to mention I need to keep my job to keep my stuff, so I can go to school and finish college."

Mischa smiles at her, "Yes, there is that. The good news is, you don't have to kill them, like we used to. Rick changed the laws so that in the Horde if you can incapacitate with the capacity to kill, that is enough."

"Oh, I can do that," Maddie says with an easy air and flippant shrug. "But I still don't want to be Beta."

Mischa sighs, "Figure out a way to show everyone that they will lose if they fight you. That will put things on a social footing, which is a longer and more complicated dance, but I can help in some of that, as can Rick, if you're okay with that."

"For a change, yeah, I'm okay with that," Maddie says with feeling, nodding her head. "I know I'm in the deep end on this and need a life preserver."

"Okay, I'll talk to Tasha and Richard and we'll shift some things, see if we can help set something up," she says cryptically as she glances in the distance, then back at Maddie with a serious expression. "You will have to take up a position in the Wolf Clan, though. You can't be that dominant in the Clan and not have a job of responsibility."

"But I don't wanna work in the Clan," she practically whines.

"It doesn't have to be full time, something a couple times a week, but serious when there's a lock down scenario," she says.

Maddie sighs and slumps her shoulders in defeat, "Fine. I'll work part time."

"And one last thing," Mischa says solemnly. "You can't act like this in front of them. Otherwise they can cite instability in leadership and have you stripped of your position and take away your legal adult status."

Maddie blinks, "They can do that?"

"If you act like an irrational teenager that shouldn't be in charge of others, then you can't be trusted," she says with a serious nod and a shrug. "That will be a risk and a problem for a couple years, hon, that's the reality of it."

Maddie sighs, "Okay, when dealing with other shapeshifters not in the circle of trust, I must be in Agogite mode. Check."

"You're going to do fine," Mischa says, putting a hand on Maddie's knee.

"Oh, I'm going to kick ass, I just don't want to cause any unnecessary damage to the Horde along the way," Maddie says with a dismissive gesture. "Rick's put too much time and effort for me to mess it up by being stupid. He doesn't deserve that."

"Don't get too cocky, kid," Mischa says as she gives her a quick hug, looking at her again at arm's length. "I can't believe how much you've grown."

"I'm not done yet," Maddie reminds her with a grin.

Richard pauses a dozen yards from the front door to his office building, his nose tickled and overwhelmed, wolfsbane heavy in the air. He turns in place, his right hand twitching, Krigsherre flying from where it rests a few miles away towards him. An instinct honed by years of living in harsh locations with trained killers trying to end his existence kicks in and he dives to the side.

The sharp crack of a bullet passing nearby spikes his adrenaline, he rolls and leaps next to a parked Horde SUV on the street as now a hail of bullets chip the sidewalk and slam into the vehicle. He rolls to the side, behind the engine block which will give him the best cover from fire while noting that the rounds are not small, likely a .308 semi-automatic fired from a few hundred yards down the street. He rolls again as the shooter has adjusted and is firing low, below the vehicle and the rounds skip under the vehicle, leaving a blood trail where a silver round had grazed his thigh.

He leaps into the street, a blur as he snatches Krigsherre from the air by the handle, spins and hurls the enchanted sword in the direction of fire. The blade spins as it flies the block and a half down the street, hit once by one of the rounds still being fired at the Khan, but undeterred from its path as it cuts through the corner of the building the sniper is crouching over. The brick and mortar practically explodes with the impact and sends the shooter back in a cloud of dust, missing an arm from the blade.

Richard is running after his thrown sword, calling it back in an arc as his leg bleeds during his run, and once Krigsherre is back in his hand, he shifts to his warrior form. His body shifts and erupts out of his human form, through the light wool suit he had been wearing into that of a seven foot tall half human half tiger warrior form with whip stripes across his back and a short tail. His leg bleeds less after the shift, having sped the healing by shifting, and he snarls as he speeds up then leaps into the air.

The sword in his hand is no longer the three foot katana it was when he was in human form, but now a four and a half foot long Viking katana in exactly the same proportions, the magic of the blade and his person allowing the change of the weapon when he shifts. His leap takes him to twenty yards from the front of the building he's aiming for, then springs upwards with his enhanced strength, taking him to the roof of the building he had just damaged.

Richard clears the ledge by a foot and rolls onto the roof with his sword held ready as he scans the surroundings. He relaxes slightly as he identifies the man clad in black lying in a large pool of blood missing an arm with a shattered rifle beside him. He walks over to the man and pulls off the balaclava the man had on, concealing his face.

Richard doesn't recognize the man's face, and his scent is masked by wolfsbane, he'd used it to cover his scent when he'd scouted the front of his business. He frowns and sighs as he hears two other shapeshifters land on the roof, one a were-tiger the other a were-leopard, both general security for his firm and members of the Horde.

"I want him bagged for any evidence, contact our investigators and get them here immediately," he says, turning to the two guards, one in a warrior tiger form, the other still in human form. "I need to know if this was a group, organization or person."

"Yes, khan," they both say, and Richard walks away from the dead body with an internal frown but pauses mid stride as a suspicion that something else is going on.

The pause saves his life, as a larger bullet than the one that the previous shooter had used passes through where his chest would have been. The bullet, a massive .50 caliber round designed originally as an anti-aircraft round, instead grazes his left bicept, and the shock wave of displaced air that follows the bullet rips the skin and muscle off all the way to the bone. Richard leaps forward without thought, diving off of the building towards the street in order to get out of the shooter's line of fire.

He nearly escapes, but another round follows him, and this one hits his right arm below the elbow, effectively amputating the limb as he then falls to the street below. He lands hard on his shoulder, cracking a bone and denting the asphalt street, narrowly missing a hybrid car carrying someone to work in the late morning light. Richard can hear the sounds of panicking horses and people around him and he holds his right arm to his chest, his left unable to move below the shoulder.

He grits his teeth as he glances around, people running from the blood and the chaos of what had just happened, and clenches his teeth to keep the pain from dragging his logical mind from him. He glances to the side where Krigsherre lies, his right hand still gripping it, and he shrugs his left shoulder while rolling to his knees and attempting to stand. He manages to grab the hand with a limp arm, the fingers catching on the pommel of the weapon, and he trots towards his office with focused intensity as he forces himself to stay in control and to figure out who is trying to kill him.

Tasha storms into Hoffman Resources, her nose flaring and eyes flashing gold as the scent of her mate's blood hits her nose, a trail of it over the threshold and leading to the back. She follows the trail and no one in the bustling building gets in her way, a dozen security specialists from the Horde watching the exits and making those who work in the building nervous. Tasha hurries down the stairs to the basement, where a loup cage and medical suite are for emergencies, which this falls under.

She does not pause at the door as she walks into the suite, where Richard is sitting on a medical table in warrior form, his left bicep missing a chunk of muscle and his right hand sitting in a solution to the side. She looks at the doctor off to the side, a were-rat shapeshifter who is looking at the Khan nervously, and she knows why. This normally a shapeshifter this wounded would be out cold or a Loup, it is a miracle that he has not lost control or simply passed out, and tigers are certainly not in the habit of allowing rats to pick at their wounds.

"Richard," Tasha says with as close to a soothing tone as she can manage, and his huge cat eyes turn and fixate on her own, his tense body relaxing ever so slightly.

"Martin needs to reattach your hand, Richard," she says soothingly, approaching him directly and maintaining eye contact. "I need you to focus on me and not shift, okay?"

He huffs, nodding, and she worries more, he is holding so tight he cannot speak. She motions to the doctor, who moves to the severed hand and pulls it out of the solution and puts it on a tray to Richard's right, then starts to work on a graft of the limb back onto his arm. Tasha looks at the slowly shrinking missing chunk of meat on her husband's arm, apparently done with a very large caliber bullet and blood oozing down the arm.

She shakes her head in amazement, he had somehow gotten into the building with minimum function of one arm, gotten to the suite and let Alex put an IV in him before he had locked down and lost the ability to communicate, except by growling when the doctor tried to touch him. She reaches up and gently strokes his fur covered head while he continues to stare into her eyes, and she wonders how she could ever survive without him.

Tony rides his horse beside Maddie's as they ride through downtown Houston on their way to the Wolf Clan weekly meeting, feeling uneasy as they ride.

"I don't know if I should come along for this," Tony says again in a murmur. "I think there's enough drama without me getting tangled up in this."

"Mischa called the shop earlier today and we talked about how to handle tonight. She suggested that you come with me, that you're allowed as the Khan's son, and with Friend of the Horde status," she says. "I don't know why it would be a good idea, but she said it would be, so here you are."

"I'm not saying I don't trust Mischa, or dad and Ms. Nash, who I'm sure she talked to before she called you," he says with a shake of his head. "I'm just saying I don't know if this is a good idea."

"Stop worrying and just accept that this is a great idea and that everything is going to be awesome by the end of the day," she says with a gusto and flare.

"You're killing me, hon," Tony says with a smile and shake of his head.

"Blame Rick, he's the one that gave me that Ranger School false motivation ability from the Agoge," she says with a laugh. "And it cracks me up that you keep calling Tasha Ms. Nash."

"I have an Aunt her age, and mom pretty much beat into me that I call older folks mister, misses or miss," he says with a shrug. "Maybe when I'm old enough to vote I'll get better."

Maddie laughs, personally glad to have him along, always feeling better with him nearby.

The feeling sticks with her as they ride through the gate of the Domasca's property not far from where the old Pack Mansion used to be, the property ringed with a tall iron fence topped with spikes. Behind the fence is a cobbled drive leading to a large, sprawling brick house that is reminiscent of something a high level count in old France would own. As they approached the attached stable, a pair of stable hands come out, werewolf early teens, and take their horses.

"They'll know you're here with me," Maddie says in a tone so low that a shapeshifter would have trouble hearing if they were beside her, but Tony's even more sensitive ears sense with ease.

He does not respond and they walk behind the manor, to the field behind it where beautifully kept gardens are arrayed. Mrs. Domasca is a witch from the Russian style, and she keeps all her herbs and supplies fresh by growing her own in the backyard. Not only that, though, but she has all the plants beautifully displayed and arrayed around the multi-acre space behind the house with large and thick grassy fields between them. An impressive and obviously expensive display of power, money and design as the two walk hand in hand up to the area where the other shapeshifters are gathering.

As they approach the organized group, Marshall and five others approach them, frowning at them as they do. Tony has stretched his senses and can tell the details of them, and can sense also by their stances and movements that these men and one woman are used to being enforcers in the Clan.

"Beta wants to see you right away, kid," Marshall says with an angry glare at Maddie, his body healed but his ego still bruised and bleeding.

"I'll see her," Maddie says with a glare at him as she releases Tony's hand and looks him in the eyes while taking a step closer. "But don't call me kid again, or I'll have to hurt you."

Marshall frowns at her, "You don't get to take that tone with me, puppy. You sucker punched me before and got lucky, and it won't happen again."

He points at her briefly as he says it, but does not maintain the gesture, not after what happened last time.

Maddie growls deep in her chest and pulls off her shoulder harness and weapons belt and hands it to Tony as she speaks, "Fine, why don't you show me what for, then?"

Marshall shakes his head with a scowl, "Beta said to bring you to her right away, no sideshows. Let's go."

"What's the matter? Don't got what it takes to do as you're told? Looks like the sideshow's already started," Maddie says as she steps into his personal space, going nose to nose with the taller man, who leans down to snarl at her in turn.

Marshall is on the brink of losing it when Leslie, the Wolf Clan's Beta arrives at the side of the slowly gathering werewolves who have sensed the tension and have come to watch.

"Put her in line, Marshall," the Beta orders, and that is all the permission he needs as he swings at Maddie in a flash.

Maddie sways backwards from the powerful swing, the fist glancing her hair but missing her head as she drops low and pivots. She spins to her left and flips as she plants her hands and launches the heel of her left foot up into his jaw from below. The blow launches him a few feet off of the ground with his head rocked back with hands limp as he arcs beautifully to land on his back, completely laid out on the grass.

Maddie has returned to her feet easily and looks around with a non-plussed expression, holding her hands up and gesturing in a "come on" gesture.

"So, is there anyone else?" she asks, glancing around, her gaze finally settling on Leslie with a questioning expression.

Leslie looks at her for a moment then calls out, "James!"

After a moment, a man has moved through the gathered crowd, now encircling Maddie to watch, Tony still behind her a few yards, relaxed in appearance. The man is a bit over six feet tall, with dark skin and a bowl cut of black hair over a muscled and sculpted body showing that he works out religiously, looking to be in his early twenties. He has on a dark blue t-shirt and black sweats over bare feet, and he pulls a challenge knife from his belt.

"You're going to work for me from now on," the man, James, says. "I know you won't just tuck tail, so let's get this over with."

He tosses her a six inch challenge knife then tosses his belt to the side and gestures at Tony.

"And send your pet home, this isn't his business, this isn't a field trip," he says with a dismissive tone.

Maddie had been preparing on simply gutting him and hamstringing him as she shucks off her enchanted vest, but her jaw clenches at his tone as she drops the vest, revealing a black sleeveless shirt.

"You don't talk about him like that," she says in a low growl as she stalks towards him quickly, closing the twenty yards between them as she throws the knife into the dirt angrily.

James walks into her on the balls of his feet, slashing across at her from her left with the knife, and instead of ducking it as she had before, she meets it. She grabs his wrist with her left hand and shoves her right hand into his elbow, the now clawed fingers ripping the joint apart. She leaped as she did it and turned her body, driving her right shoulder into his chest solidly, cracking his solar plexus and driving the air from his lungs. She continues the tackle and is straddling his abdomen as he fights for breath and she rises up while swinging her right fist in a backhanded hammer blow that strikes the side of his face.

Blood and teeth arch into the crowd around them, and she hammers down hard with her left elbow, planting a solid blow on his right collarbone, which everyone within fifty feet can hear crack from the power of it. His left arm reaches up to try and stop her, to do something, but she leans back and grabs the limb and twists it into an unnatural position in four ways then shoves the mangled limb away. She rolls to the side and rises to her feet as she glares at the silent crowd around them, her eyes flashing blue as she snarls her next words.

"Nobody talks about him that way, do you hear me? He is _mine_!" she says angrily at the crowd only looks on in amazement at the strength of her declaration and the way in which she practically destroyed James.

After a few moments the crowd parts and Mrs. Domasca enters the circle that surrounds Maddie. Her dark, nearly black hair is braided down her back in a thick rope, and she wears a black pant suit and sneakers with a white collared shirt unbuttoned on the top. She has a belt of small pouches containing ingredients for her spells and magic, and she tilts her head as she looks at the wheezing unconscious form of James lying on the grass.

"Will someone please help James?" she says while turning her attention to Maddie. "And Madelyn, would you walk with me?"

Maddie's breathing has eased, the brief spike of adrenaline running its course and she nods, Tony walking up behind her with her gear. Leslie has approached from the side and looks around with a meaningful expression, the other wolves taking the hint and moving off to give them privacy. The four walk towards the Manor, Mrs. Domasca leading with Leslie to her left and Maddie to her right, Tony just behind and to Maddie's right as she dons her vest and weapons again.

"Madelyn, we need to talk about the business of the Clan, I don't think the Khan's son is really interested in these things. Why don't you send him home?" she suggests after she has all her gear on, her tone patronizing.

Maddie fights not to growl, knowing that will be the wrong thing to do, but fights to keep her tone civil and achieves a low strained voice.

"He is mine, ma'am, not yours, to send away or keep close," she says, looking down though internally she wants to challenge her gaze.

Mrs. Domasca frowns and begins, "Madelyn –,"

"Alpha," Leslie interrupts from the side softly. "I apologize for cutting you off, but I know you cannot scent her. She is mated."

Domasca slows to a stop and turns to stare at Leslie, "You are certain?"

"It is a scent marker that can be confused for other things, especially at her age, but coupled with her reaction to James trying to order him away," she shakes her head. "I believe they are mated, and they have lain together, recently."

Mrs. Domasca looks at Maddie who now looks up and meets her eyes levelly and coolly, understanding what is being said, Tony silent and unknowing at her side.

"Being human in this world is difficult," she says to Maddie, and glancing at Tony with a small frown. "It seems that Anthony is now attached to the Horde in two ways now. You will have to speak to him about what that means."

"Yes, ma'am," Maddie says with a duck of her head and looking away.

"James taught a fighting class for the Clan at one of our gyms in the city, three times a week," Domasca says blandly. "That is your task now, understand?"

Maddie takes a breath and nods, "I understand, and will do my best to teach the wolves how to fight better."

"I would say that I doubt you have much to teach, being so young, but I was watching from a distance, and see you have things to teach," she replies. "I leave you two to talk, then come witness the adjudications."

With that she turns and returns to the gardens, Leslie in tow. Maddie waits for them to be too far away to hear and turns to Tony, a pensive expression on her face.

"I didn't get all that," Tony says with a puzzled tone, looking at her.

"Can… can you take your mask off, I have something to tell you," she says with a bit of nervousness, moving to a nearby stone bench set to look at a patch of flowers.

Tony walks with her and pulls his mask off, tucking it in his belt as he leans his bow on the bench's side, then sitting next to her.

Maddie takes a deep breath then speaks slowly and carefully, "I am not sure how to tell you this, so I will explain it like my parents told me when I was little."

She pauses for another breath.

"It'll be okay, Maddie," Tony says, laying his partially gloved hand on her own which is sitting on her knee. "I'm here."

She takes another breath and takes his hand in her own and plows on.

"In nature, lions will have one male lion in a Pride and he is the mate to all the females until he is pushed out of position, and when he is, the females accept the new male, and life goes on," she says, looking at her hands around his then looking at him for the next part.

"Wolves don't do that. We have a pack, and they mate with only one other. They mate for life until death separates them," she pauses pensively again before continuing.

"And werewolves only mate with one other as well," Tony finishes for her, tilting his head down as he locks her gaze. "That was what the Beta said, that I'm your mate."

Maddie nods, scared for a moment at what his reaction will be. He is human, and he is not locked into her the way she is now locked into him, he can choose to not have her, to refuse being swept into the Clan and the Horde as a member by association because of her.

Tony reaches up with his other hand, the scarred one covered in a thin leather glove and cups the side of her face, smiling at her gently.

"Good," he says simply, leaning forward and kissing her gently. "I was trying to figure out how to say 'I love you' without sounding hokey."

"I love you, too," Maddie replies, holding him tight while fighting not to cry and failing.

After a few long moments of holding each other, they rise and return to the area the Clan is gathered, hand in hand.

Tony walks at Maddie's side as they move through the crowd around the stone platform in the center which is where Mrs. Domasca sits on a stone chair with a short table next to her, a stack of folders on it. His senses are on high alert, the moment he had shared a few minutes ago with Maddie easing him some, but the fact that there are over a hundred werewolves around him makes him tense. He had kept off his mask at Maddie's urging, self-conscious of his appearance, but learning to not be ashamed of who he is, especially when Maddie made it so clear that she is not.

"I feel like they're staring," he says under his breath.

"They just haven't seen you much, and your left side is stunning," she says with a squeeze of his hand.

"If you say so," he says low enough that no one hears as they move to where a small group of young werewolves are sitting in a circle, a cooler between them with some food and beverages.

"Hey, Maddie," one of the group says as they walk up, the other three doing the same, Tony recognizing them from the other night when she called for backup.

"Hey everybody, this is Tony," she says with a smile. "Tony, this is Mike, Harv, Jim and Talia."

"Hey, everyone," Tony says, fighting his natural nervousness.

"Is that the new bow?" Talia asks, a black haired and brown eyed Asian woman in her early twenties who works at a bakery in town and is taking college courses part time while helping out in the Clan and Horde.

"Yeah," he says, pulling it from where he had slung it on his back, holding it up to show them all, handing it to the one Maddie had called Harv. "Try to draw it."

Harv is a brown haired guy standing just under six feet with a stocky figure and big hands, his green eyes studying the bow and its designs. He shrugs then starts to draw the bow, but the string refuses to bend. Harv frowns hard and strains to pull the string back, but it does not budge.

"As far as I can tell, I'm the only one who can draw it," Tony says with a smile, he and the others laughing lightly at Harv's consternation.

"The string or the bow should have broken," Harv says with a slightly confused expression as he hands the bow back.

"Magic," Tony says with a shrug.

"It looks cool, too," the guy introduced as Mike says, a black haired and blue eyed guy sitting cross legged, but would stand a touch over six feet and lanky, also in his early twenties. "How much did that cost? I'm not into bows, but I'm curious how much something like that runs."

"It was given to me, actually," Tony says, sitting on the ground with the others. "Thor stopped by my place and gave it to me."

There's a moment of shocked silence from the group, though Maddie only grins.

"Thor, the Viking god of thunder, stopped by your place and gave you the bow?" Jim asks, a young black man in his late teens with a thick frame of six and a quarter feet when standing.

"Yeah, he wanted to apologize for what went down with the Vikings," Tony says with a shrug, taking a bottle of water from the cooler. "Maddie got some stuff, too."

"A couple enchanted daggers and this fine vest," Maddie says from where she sits next to Tony, lounging against him. She pulls out one of the blades and waves it for the group.

"Well… okay," Talia says with a stunned blink.

"So, I had a question, cuz I stayed in the area until the cops finished confirming the neighborhood was clear," Harv says, leaning to the side and propped on an elbow. "I saw that the top of the one building was blown up, and it smelled and looked fresh. What happened?"

"Maddie was clearing the stadium area and I was clearing that building," Tony says after a glance at Maddie. "I'd put down over a dozen, and when I got to the top floor, they had hostages. I was moving to help them when I noticed explosives. They had rigged the floor and set it off."

"How did you get out?" Jim asks, curious.

"I didn't," Tony says with a tight frown. "I couldn't get to the hostages and barely made it to the room next door and ducked into a corner adjacent to the charges."

"How were you still walking when we showed up?" Talia asks, amazed.

"I have heightened senses, more than any of you guys do, and when I focus, I can read details really well and react pretty fast," Tony says with a shrug. "I was able to get in the lee of the blast wave and dodge the worst of it. Between that and my armor, I still took a full body bruise and the gash on my hand, but that was most of it, though my armor will need a lot of repair. Almost falling out of the building was worse."

"I'm annoyed you can't use guns," Maddie says with a frown, rubbing his leg compassionately. "If you'd had a semi auto, I wouldn't have had to make that jump."

"Which was amazing, by the way," Tony says with a chuckle. "Good catch."

"Saw it in a comic book once, believe it or not," she says with a smile of her own, leaning her back on him.

"You two are incredible," Harv says with a shake of his head. "I mean, we've all had to help out with security and the occasional monster that the magic spits out, but you guys went all John Wayne on a swarm of undead without blinking. I don't know how you do it."

"Take not counsel of your fears, for the fear is not real, it will cripple you and make you less than you are," Maddie says in a sing song fashion. "That is what they told us in the Agoge."

" 'Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure'," Tony intones. " 'It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you _not_ to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others'."

"My man, the poet," Maddie grins, leaning up to kiss his right cheek.

"Marianne Williamson, actually," Tony says with another shrug. "My high school made us memorize a quote we liked and use it in a speech they made us give in our English class."

"So what happens now?" Maddie asks, looking around at the others. "This is the second one of these I've been to, and the other time I was busy getting initiated. Do we just hang out, or what?"

"More or less," Mike says with a shrug. "It's partly so we can socialize as a Clan, but also so we can see what is happening to everyone else in the Clan, and if we need or want to be involved in what's going on."

"You make it sound like an AA meeting," Talia teases him.

"Thanks for giving us a call the other night," Jim says with nod, the others joining him. "I know we aren't as trained, but the extra money helps out. We're all working on our degrees, and every bit helps."

"No problem, I'm glad you could make it, Tony lost his bow in the explosion and I didn't want to go after them alone, not with the possible casualty count if some got away," Maddie says with a shrug.

"I still don't know how you guys do it," Harv says with another shake of his head. "With two of us we got cut up bad when we tracked those three down. You guys took on multiple things each, solo. That's just amazing."

Tony only shrugs and Maddie laughs, looking sideways at him, "Anyway, let's talk about something else."

"So how did you guys meet?" Talia asks, leaning forward on her knees in her cross legged position.

Maddie frowns, but Tony chuckles this time as they tell them about the battle for New Orleans.

Richard is sitting in his office at Hoffman Resources, leaning forward in his chair wearing sweatpants and a red t-shirt, having just walked up from the medical suite in the basement. Tasha sits across from him in a chair wearing jeans, t-shirt and leather vest, her sword leaning against the wall, Krigsherre next to it. Richard is staring down at the stump on the end of his right arm, the attempt to graft on his severed hand failing, as the bullet had taken too much of his arm and reduced it to mist. Now his right arm ends just below the elbow, and he is mentally coming to terms with it.

"Autumn is on the way," Tasha says quietly into the silent room.

"No, cancel that," he says with a shake of his head, his tone flat. "She can come to the Bastion later, but not here, not now. It's too dangerous."

Another pause.

"Are we going into lockdown?" Tasha asks, having almost called it herself.

"No, not yet," Richard says, dragging his gaze from his stump. "This was specifically targeted at me, the shooter didn't go for the other people on the roof once I was out of sight. I bet he rabbited the moment he lost me as a target."

"Not a she?" Tasha asks, no heat in her voice, just trying to follow her mate's train of thought.

"It was a .50 caliber semi-auto, even if a shapeshifter female were firing it, she wouldn't have the mass to fire it rapidly and accurately like the shooter did," he says with a shake of his head.

"What is your estimate of this guy?" Tasha asks, her own mind chewing at the problem.

"Ruthless," Richard says, his eyes looking into the distance now. "He sacrificed a rook to get his shot. The first shooter had a good chance at getting me, but he set up to be able to shoot the counterattack. He betted on me taking out the sniper and locating the shooter. And if the shooter got away, he just would have sat and watched, knowing there was a good chance I would personally check the scene, because of my background."

"So he's good," she says with a nod.

"No, he's the best," Richard says with a thoughtful frown. "Most Rangers in the Regiment couldn't have set that up. We have most of the skills, but for that kind of shooting and set-up, this guy was a professional sniper. And that's a very small community, especially these days with magic floating around."

"How do we find him?" she asks, her most pressing question.

"We can't," he says, his eyes returning to her. "But I know someone in a pale colored house with pillars that can."

Tony and Maddie are sitting with her friends and relaxing a few hours after arriving, the last petitioner approaching the stone dais fifty yards from where they sit. Though the shapeshifters can only hear the words spoken if the speaker or Domasca speaks up loudly, they cannot hear normal tones, though Tony can. So it is Tony who hears the man's low toned growl to Mrs. Domasca, and he rises to his feet as he looks in that direction, the rest of his group pausing to look at him in confusion.

"Tony?" Maddie asks, but he raises his hand with an intent expression as he strides towards the dais, Maddie and her friends following him.

They get close enough, and the shapeshifters trailing him can hear what the wide and tall man is saying in the open space in front of the dais.

"It is an insult to the clan and our values that it is allowed to continue, and I demand the Alphas take action," the man says, glancing at where Tony and Maddie now stand.

"I will accept his challenge, if the Alpha will permit me," Tony says in firm voice at the edge of the twenty yard square cleared area for speakers.

The man frowns at Tony from below his bushy black eyebrows and ink black hair, "I did not declare a challenge to you, human. I am petitioning to my Alpha, as is my right."

"I am Friend to the Horde, and if offended by a member of the Horde I have the right to petition to their Alpha to fight a challenge match," Tony says evenly, his father having ensured he was educated on the nuances Friend of the Horde status meant.

Maddie is behind him, slowly realizing what is going on, though not the why.

"Anthony, you have my permission," Domasca says with a tilt of her head on the dais as well as the barest hint of a smile.

"Thank you, ma'am," Tony says with a nod to her while removing his weapons and vest.

"I cannot fight him, he is the Khan's son, and only a human," the man says to Domasca, who Tony had heard introduced as Edward.

"I am my own man, Eddie," Tony says as he finishes pulling his weapons off and then pulls off his shirt, the scars of his torso faintly glowing in the night like the aurora borealis. "And the challenge doesn't need to be to the death."

"No blades, the challenge is until one or the other is unable or unwilling to continue to fight," Domasca declares, and Edward simply snorts and shrugs, an impressive gesture with his nearly seven foot frame and obscenely wide musculature, obviously a power lifter.

Edward pulls his own collared shirt off, then his t-shirt, his pale skin obviously lacking in sun exposure.

Tony shakes his hands absently to loosen up and rolls his shoulders, aware of Maddie whispering behind him.

"What did he say?" she asks one of the werewolves who had heard the exchange.

"Said that siblings shouldn't date, that it's unnatural and immoral," the man replies, obviously pensive.

He can hear Maddie growl, controlling her temper.

"Kick his ass, hon," Maddie says low, enough for him to hear, but he maintains his focus on his surroundings and his opponent, who has doffed his shoes and waves Tony on.

Tony takes a deep breath and settles his nerves, pushing all other thoughts out and walking towards the hulking werewolf. Despite his size, the big man carries LycV and possesses supernatural speed and reflexes as well as strength that a human of the same size would be incapable of. Tony is shifting on his toes and reading every nuance of the surrounding area as the adrenaline hits him and he rides the slowing of his perception of time, even though his body is incapable of moving faster than normal.

He reads the big man's movements by the shifting of his weight, the twisting of his shoulders and the look in his eyes, so when Edward rushes at him with a lightning jab and a following hook, Tony is not there to block or receive the blows. He sways back from the jab and ducks the hook, striking the werewolf on the inside of his knee, but not on the thick part of the joint that his human strength would only nudge, not bruise or break, but on the bone kneecap. His open palm cross shoves the disc of bone out of alignment to the side of the knee and he continues to spin with the strike and rolling towards Edward's left.

The giant werewolf is roaring in pain as he falls to his right, Tony bouncing to his feet opposite him and now behind him, and he takes full advantage. He lunges forward, but not with his fists or elbows, but with a lunging knee, hitting him solidly in the kidneys, causing him to arc his back in silent pain, unable to utter a sound due to the level of pain. Tony bounces back and spins, landing his heel on the jaw joint, snapping the bone out of place and knocking Edward unconscious.

Tony bounces back from the now limp form lying on the grass in front of the stone dais, taking a deep breath to calm his racing heart and push the adrenaline out of his system. He shakes his hands again absently to his sides and walks to where Maddie is standing with a smug smile on her face.

"Told you he was badass," Maddie says with a smirk at him, speaking to her friends at her side.

"I hold my own," Tony says with a shrug, accepting the shirt and putting it on gingerly, the rasping against his scarred skin sensitive and causing him to wince. "Thank you for holding my stuff," he says as he dons his armor and weapons.

"Thank you for defending our honor," she says with a smile and a nod to him.

"Well, I figured it was my turn," he says, leaning forward and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek.

He glances back to where two of the blue shirted security wolves are dragging away the unconscious Edward, then a brief glance at Mrs. Domasca who he can sense watching him. He pauses as he sees her lips move and the barest of breaths she speaks, so low even he can barely understand her.

"You are welcome, son of the Khan, remember this," she says, her face smiling slightly then turning to bring order to her Clan again.

Richard is in his cabin at the Bastion frowning in consternation as he eats a hearty stew Nita had made with his left hand, unused to the slower process and unwieldy with his off hand. The once completely crippled were-lion is now slowly regaining minimal control of her feet through the healing efforts of his sister, Tasha and others in the Horde also benefiting from his sister being here. With that thought in mind while setting down his spoon to reach for a glass he hears the sound of his sister rushing in the front door, and he is glad that he had sent Nita outside while he ate.

"Rich, are you okay?" she says as she is still in the living room, then emerging into the kitchen with shortened breath from hurrying to the Bastion.

"I've had better days, and believe it or not, I've had worse," he says with a tight frown.

He leans back in his chair and lets Autumn fuss over him, her hands tracing over first the stump of his right arm then the reduced muscle mass on the left arm. She clucks unapprovingly at him and shakes her head as she takes a chair to his right and sets her satchel on the table, opening the drawstring and pulling out glass bottles and small boxes. While she does this, Tasha enters the room and sits at the table, a pensive expression on her face.

"So, what's the prognosis?" she asks while Richard picks up his spoon to resume eating.

"The left arm will heal fine on its own, as I am sure you know. The right hand, however, will take some time to regrow," she says as she starts putting herbs into a pestle.

"You know I'm going to say this, but I'll say it anyway. I don't have a lot of time to wait for that," he says with a frown. "Unknown assassins, fearsome enemies lurking in the dark looking for an opportunity to challenge me to single combat or end my existence from afar, that sort of thing."

"I did know you were going to say that," she says, not looking away from her ingredients. "And recent experience has taught me that you'll still demand the faster way, even if it is painful and dangerous."

"And?" Richard asks, tilting his head to the side.

"The magic is up, but I won't have my spell ready until the next wave, and by the end of that wave, your hand will probably be back, but there will be a cost," she says firmly, now looking at him.

"Hit me," he says with a deep breath, putting the spoon down.

"At the start of the wave, I activate the circle and the spell, which will put you into a healing trance, similar to a coma, and you'll stay in that state until the limb is replaced," she says simply.

"That sounds too easy," he says with a frown.

"You need blood to feed you throughout the spell, for the duration of the wave," she says with a measured sigh and a frown. "It is borderline dark magic, and the reason it should replace the limb is because of your Lyc-V healing, your being a First and my use of the staff."

"Why is it borderline black magic?" he asks, brow furrowed in thought.

"The one who gives the blood will suffer for the duration of the spell," she says with a shake of her head. "In the original version of the spell, it's a victim being sacrificed to fuel the healing, essentially torturing and killing the sacrifice at the end of the spell. I think I can alter it so that it doesn't end with death, and as you know, I won't force someone to suffer… it will have to be a volunteer."

"I'll do it," Tasha says immediately.

"I don't know if that's a good idea," Richard says with a frown. "If I'm out, who's running the Horde?"

"This isn't day one, Richard," Tasha says with a toss of her hair and a frown at him, the narrow braids scattering over her shoulder. "We're not running this alone, anymore. We have people we trust to watch our backs. We call Mitchell back from Dallas and he'll be here by the time the next wave hits, and Noel is here, with Mischa and at the very least the Agogites, every one of which would die for you."

"We should ask them, then, if any would volunteer," he says then with a gesture to the door. "I don't think you should risk yourself, not like this."

Tasha takes a deep breath and locks eyes with him, "Richard, I have to take the risk."

Richard studies her eyes and face and frowns, "What am I missing?"

Tasha looks down for a moment, glances at Autumn, then asks softly, "Can I have a minute?"

Autumn glances up from her mixing at Tasha, then at Richard, realizing this is a marriage thing and nods, quickly leaving the room with her stuff.

"So?" Richard asks, leaning back in his chair, focusing on his wife.

"You're too close to the problem, so you don't see it," she says with a glance at her hands. "I didn't attend the Agoge, and if I wanted to, I couldn't because of my place in the Horde. And with Mischa in our bed, I've lost support and power."

"You killed the greatest of the dragons when we fought Tiamat, pretty much single handed, you don't need to go through the Agoge. And you were the one that brought her into our house," Richard says, frowning in consternation and confusion. "How would you lose favor for that? I'd think I would, since it would look like I'm not enough for you."

"That's just it," she says with a swallow. "It looks like I'm unfaithful, and though no one knows of the one night that I was but the three of us, the implication is there."

Richard starts to fold his arms as he frowns, but stops and starts a couple times with the awkward feeling of his right arm, then just leans forward with his arms on the table.

"I love you, Tasha, I married you," he says, looking at her firmly. "You know that you are that missing piece that gives me purpose, that makes me whole and touches my soul when I need it most. I care for Mischa, as do you, but you are the other half of my soul, no other."

"I know," she says, reaching out and gripping his one hand in both of hers. "But not everyone sees it that way, and if you just roar at everyone about it, they'll act the way you want, but it won't make them believe it."

Richard grits his teeth and frowns as he takes a breath then asks, "You really want to do this? If Autumn uses my magic and enhances it with her staff, then this is going to be a powerful spell, and if it's original intent was torture…"

"You've shown me how much I mean to you plenty of times, my beloved, now it's my turn," she says with her own firm gaze.

Tony rides his dark warhorse fast down the dark road on the edge of town through the night, the landscape gleaming in fluorescent colors in his vision, light unseen by normal humans. He sees every root, every rock and hole on the trail, and guides his galloping horse around them, the mount having learned that its rider knows where he is going. He has Maddie's clothes and weapons in a bundle on the saddle, as beside him in the night is a huge wolf, two hundred pounds in size with a shimmering dragon skin vest covering its chest and abdomen. Sleek, formfitting and shifting without chafing the vest protects the vitals of Maddie's wolf form, the fur showing a glistening black in the night.

They were preparing to leave the Clan gathering when word had been spread that the Khan had been attacked and that he had been badly wounded. No security lockdown has been called, but that does not matter to them, Richard is family to the both of them, and that is where they need to be.

Tony has his senses stretched to the limits, focusing on the world around him as they race to the Bastion, knowing that someone out there tried to kill his father today and may be after them. That awareness allows him to know where the bullet comes from that hits Maddie solidly on the ribs just behind her shoulder. The impact of the heavy caliber round travelling over 2800 feet per second knocks her on her side with a jerk. Tony is moving as fast as his body will allow, sliding off the saddle of the horse to his left, away from where the shot came from. He twists while falling, drawing an arrow from his quiver drawing and firing smoothly at over a 30 degree angle from the ground, apparently at empty air.

He lands and rolls, keeping low as he dodges another bullet meant for him, his horse slowing to a trot a dozen yards away as it realizes its rider is missing. The round skips and he darts and weaves as another round cracks past him, less than a second after the previous one, and he concentrates on not getting shot for a few moments until the shooting abruptly stops after the eighth round fired.

He rises to his feet as the shooting stops and rushes to where Maddie is rising to her feet, shaking her shaggy head and snarling. Tony approaches and she lets him as she looks in the distance towards where the shots had come from but with no report, a silencer must have been used.

"It sounds like you cracked a rib or two," he says as he kneels next to her as he listens to the grating bones, picking the deformed bullet from where it is stuck to the side of the vest, failing to penetrate. "I hit him with a shocking arrow, and I think he's still in his hide, that way."

He points towards where the fire came from, "Don't kill him, we'll need to question him."

Maddie sprints into the darkness with a growl and Tony looks around himself, wondering what is going on and who is out to get them this time.

Tony is jogging in front of his horse, leading it with a man tied up and unconscious slung over the saddle with Maddie trotting beside him as they enter the gates of the Bastion. As the gate closes behind him a few of the Horde from Clan Cat and Clan Wolf he recognizes as security approach and he waves them to the man on the saddle.

"He fired at Maddie, hit her over the heart and would have killed her had it not been for the vest," he says as he pulls Maddie's clothes from the saddle, Maddie rising to her feet as she shifts back to human form. "Secure him but don't kill him, we'll need information from him."

Tony turns and hands Maddie her pants and underwear, waiting for her to pull them on before they walk up to the cabin. Tasha has come out to meet them, and Maddie gives her a hug as Tony simply stands to the side.

"He's fine," she says and brings them into the house.

"Didn't think he wouldn't be," Maddie says with a sardonic smirk. "How many were there?"

"Two," Tasha says as they enter the house and they pause in the living room, where Richard sits in the couch with Mischa, who is rubbing a salve over the stump of the arm.

"It's not the first amputation we've dealt with, so stop staring," Richard says with a firm look at the two younger folks. "I'll be good as new soon enough. I heard you got attacked on the way. Sniper?"

"Yeah," Tony says, surprised as he pulls off his mask. "A bit over three hundred yards off with a semi-auto .338 Lapua, hit Maddie on the ribs with his first shot, we were almost at a gallop for my horse."

"Did you catch him, kill him or did he get away?" he asks simply, all business.

"I managed to pin him in his hide after the first shot," Tony says easily. "Maddie took the bullet on the vest, didn't even chip it, but hurt the ribs."

"I'm glad I let Thor work the dragon parts you forgot about," he says dryly, a gentle rebuke to the two of them. "Speaking of which, hold on a second Mish," he says, standing and walking to the table to the side and picking up a pair of envelopes and handing one to each of them.

"Thor didn't use it all up, and I circulated the remaining materials to vendors I know, that's your cut," he says with a nod at them.

"The body was worth more than I realized," Tony says with a frown then a look of surprise as he looks at the thick stack of hundred dollar bills in the envelope.

"I figured as much," he says, reaching forward and touching Maddie's vest to feel the scales, nodding at it then patting her on the shoulder. "And thanks for remembering to take him alive. I killed mine and the other got away."

"What happened?" Maddie asks, tucking the envelope in her back pocket.

"First sniper fired at me and almost got me, but I called Krigsherre and charged him, taking him out and landing on his roost in warrior form," he says with a sour expression, walking back to the couch. "The second shooter was the actual pro, and who I'd guess has taken whatever contract is out on me, for whatever motivation. Used a fifty cal from a good distance out and was able to rapid fire accurately. He winged my left arm, taking the meat off to the bone, and pretty much vaporized my right forearm."

"How long to grow it back?" Maddie asks, in Agoge mode, her face serious and unconsciously standing with her feet shoulder width apart, square with where Richard sits and her hands behind her back.

"Normally, a few weeks, but Autumn's going to do a spell to have it back by the end of the next magic wave," he says without going into details.

"I still think _that_ is a bad idea," Mischa growls, shooting an angry glance at Tasha.

"What is?" Tony asks.

"Not important right now," he says with a shake of his head. "You two were attacked, meaning you're targets. You're staying at the Bastion until this is over."

Maddie takes a sharp breath and straightens but does not argue despite wanting to yell at him, understanding his logic.

"We just took down our shooter with the tech up," Tony says with a frown. "And these guys are only good with the tech up, from the looks of it. We can start to work in town once the next magic wave hits."

"And if it falls unexpectedly?" Richard asks, giving him a sharp look. "Then you've got a bow and they have machine guns and grenades."

"I can sense how long the waves last," Tony says with a toss of his head. "It's accurate to about two to five minutes."

Everyone in the room looks at him in silence except Maddie who already knew, and he shifts uncomfortably under the attention.

"Aunt A and I have been working on it, and I can feel it," he says with a shrug. "So we won't be caught outdoors in the tech."

"How long until the magic returns?" Richard asks instead.

Tony looks at the floor for a moment before replying, "Ten hours or so, but I'll know better at the halfway point for sure. Same during magic waves."

Richard takes a deep breath, "I'll think on it. If we have info to work with, maybe. Either way, you're both here for the rest of the night. Maddie can stay in her old room. Tony, the place you were using before is still open."

"I'd rather stay with Tony," Maddie says without thinking, and Richard looks at her blankly for a moment as she looks down, blushing at his fatherly reaction to the suggestion.

"They're mated," Tasha says quietly, and Richard blinks and tilts his head to the side.

"Okay, so what does that mean for them? What are we looking at?" he asks, glancing between Mischa, who is leaning back in her own cushioned chair and absently stroking her swollen belly, and Tasha who is standing next to the two.

"Maddie won't be dating anyone again unless Tony dies," Tasha says bluntly in that same quiet voice.

Richard sighs heavily with that, a slight chuckle in it as he shakes his head, "Well, that solves problems and raises some as well."

After a pause he smiles and shakes his head again, laughing lightly, "You two run off, we'll talk in the morning."

They turn to leave, but he stands up suddenly, "Wait."

He walks around the couch to them and wraps them both in a hug, and after a moment they return it. He leans back a foot or so to look into their faces.

"I'm happy for both of you, so don't worry about it, things will work out, have faith," he pats Tony on the shoulder with his good hand, his stump simply lying on Maddie's shoulder. "We'll talk in the morning."

Tony and Maddie leave the cabin behind, once again holding hands.

"Not to sound ungrateful, but I hope to God that I don't become a grandfather in the near future, that might be more than I can bare right now," Richard says with a theatrical wave at the sky and a sigh.

"Going from no children to grandchildren in eighteen months does sound like a bit of a race, I agree," Mischa says with a nod, looking down at her pregnant womb.

Richard sighs again as he sits on the couch and leans back, Tasha sitting beside him and leaning against him, "We have a live lead and a theoretical lead right now. I should get a call back in the next couple hours from the FBI, they'll send someone to liaise with us about the shooter."

"How do you know that?" Mischa asks.

"I called the White House and asked for some help, and the First Lady put me in touch with the head of the Secret Service Detail. They track things like snipers capable of killing the President from further than a few football fields, and he said it's not that big a list," he says, explaining the process. "He's getting the list and related information to a specialist at the FBI, which has a couple special Divisions for types of magic users as well as the conventional means. That Agent will call for a link up time to trade info and we go from there."

Tasha takes a deep breath, "So, we wait."

"Yeah, we wait," Richard says with a frustrated sigh, his handless arm around Tasha and his left picking up the glass of whiskey on the coffee table.

Tony stops in front of the small two bedroom house he had once stayed in when he first came to the Bastion and met his father for the first time, stares at it at it gravely. Maddie is next to him and stops as well, glancing at him, then staring when he does not move.

"What is it?" she asks, her face curious.

"Just… memories, that's all," he says with a frown, glancing around. "I got played for a sucker by a…" he trails off and coughs before continuing. "And Jark and Floki would hang out with me, when I lived here."

"I bet there's another one open that no one's using." Maddie says, and they wander over the security building to find an unused building to stay in.

"Thanks, for understanding," he says softly, glancing around at where he can sense shapeshifters wandering around the Bastion, a hundred or so in it for security after the attack on the Khan.

"I don't know if I do, but I don't want you to be uncomfortable," she says, moving closer and wrapping around his right arm as they walk.

"It's just…" he trails off for a moment and shakes his head. "It's just that sometimes I have… nightmares. Flashes of Floki and Jark, of when we trained and it meshes into when we fought side by side, and then it turns into me killing them."

She rubs his arm sympathetically, "It'll be okay. It just takes time."

"Why do I feel old and I'm not even eighteen, yet?" he asks, shrugging.

"I know the feeling," she says with a smirk. "The mileage can be rough."

They walk in silence for moment.

"That was a good line, earlier, by the way," she says with a grin, glancing up at him.

"Hmm?" he glances down at her brown eyes as they approach the security building.

" 'I was trying to figure out how to say I love you without sounding hokey'," she says with a smile at him that lights up his world.

"Well, I love you, and…" he says, but she cuts him off, pulling him down into a kiss.

Tony sits up abruptly, his hand reaching to where his sword normally lies but finds empty air, as this is not his apartment. Beside him Maddie has rolled out of the bed and landed in a crouch with her hands hooked and ready to shift into claws. They both relax when the pounding on the front door registers and they recognize Aunt A's banging and yelling.

"I said wake up and answer the door!" she yells.

Tony grabs a too big t-shirt from the room's dresser, already wearing pajama bottoms, Maddie wearing the matched set's giant blue and red plaid shirt.

"Coming!" he shouts back, though the echo is almost painful to his ears and still waking mind, Maddie pulling drawers to find shorts to wear.

He opens the door to find Aunt A in jeans and t-shirt with staff in hand, the sun at her back, which causes Tony to back out of the light and letting her in.

"I don't care that you two are living in sin under the same roof, I am a mature adult, and accepting of the odd strictures of the shapeshifter community as well as Tony's premature adulthood," she says firmly as she sweeps into the room, Max following her in and Tony closing the door. "But that two people with above average hearing and senses do not wake up when they hear the doorbell is simply unforgivable."

"I don't have a doorbell at my apartment, and I learned to sleep through the bell we had when I was growing up," Tony says with a shrug, following to where she goes to the kitchen, leaning her staff against the wall then going to the cupboards.

"This isn't the place I was in last time, I don't know what's in the shelves," he says before she opens them.

"I helped Tasha make the stocking plans for the Bastion's residences," she says without looking back as she pulls three mugs from the top cupboard and starting to make tea. "Pull the sealed package of hotdogs from the fridge and cut them up for Max, please. Knives are in the drawer to the right of the sink."

Tony just shakes his head and sighs as he pulls open the fridge and finds a big bulk bag of hotdogs, setting the ziplock bag on the counter. He is setting down the knife and a plate when Maddie walks in and he holds out a cold hot dog to her, which she takes and starts to munch on at the kitchen table.

"What's up, Aunt A?" Maddie asks with hot dog in her mouth.

"I am going to be very busy today setting up the spell that Rich and Tasha are going to be the focus on later, when the magic returns," she explains as she turns from the heating water on the stove. "Tony, how much longer until the magic hits us?"

Tony's hands still as he takes a breath and judges the feel and flow of the world before answering, "Five hours and change, I wasn't awake at the halfway point. Give me a minute and some paper and I'll have a time."

"Good," she says with a nod. "I talked with Rich and Tasha, and they are okay with you two going out during the magic wave to get a head start on who is after us, as long as you take others with you for backup, three Agogites at least."

"Sounds like overkill," Tony says, turning from the cut up hot dogs, and tossing a piece to where Max sits in the middle of the kitchen, snapping it out of the air with a clomp.

"There's no video, but I talked with one of the security guys that were there," Autumn says with a shake of her head. "This guy set up an ambush and was able to get off two shots from a fifty cal BMG with little over a second in between, which is the feat of a master sniper, and if the wind had gusted differently, my brother would be dead. As it happened, he still almost died, suffering broken bones from falling three stories and the loss of a limb."

A silence settles over the room for a moment.

"I am old enough to remember a time before magic, when guns were the way of the world," she says with a tight smile. "I was young, but I remember and have learned more than I care to in the years I've walked this earth. Man created some very devastating things over the few hundred years he had to play with gunpowder and explosives. Nuclear weapons are a fairy tale to you… it was a reality to me as a kid."

"If this crew almost took out dad, then he's got to be seriously worried about us going out, so why let us?" Tony asks after a moment.

Autumn turns and lifts the whistling pot from the stove, "Because we discussed it with Tasha and Mischa, and we believe that you two can take care of yourselves, as you have so capably demonstrated over the last couple months. You've chosen to be adults, so we have to treat you that way."

"So, no pressure, or anything," Maddie says with a sigh, one leg tucked under her as she sits at the table, looking at the tiles for a moment.

"I wish I could blame Richard for us all being this way," Autumn says with a near exhausted sigh after handing a cup of steaming tea to each of them. "I really wish I could, I was ready to be infuriated at him. I mean, I know better than anyone the kind of shadow he casts, and how hard it can be to live in it."

Her tone is frustrated as she says it, and she takes a breath over her tea to let the scent of an herbal chai settle her and her next words are softer.

"But Rich, or whatever name he uses, he's the one that set me free," she says with a shake of her head. "He was the one who did what I couldn't do, what our sister couldn't do, what our mother was incapable of doing."

She snorts and shakes her head, "A teenager, the youngest surviving sibling, he was the one that did what we couldn't. And after that he took care of us, the youngest, not me, the oldest, but him. He gave us a place to live and grow in. A home where our mom could die in peace. He's the reason I am what I am today, because he gave me that place of relative safety to start to really grow."

She pauses again, shaking her head and looking at Maddie and Tony with resignation in her eyes, "I was mad at him, for years. He left to join the Army when we were in college and supporting ourselves, and I was mad at him because we didn't get to have our childhoods, it was taken away from us."

She takes a deep breath, pushing down old feelings and emotions, "But that was the old me, many years before I realized how dangerous the world we live in is. Before I met other people and saw how bad they had it, how chaotic and horrible it was in some other places. I didn't stop being angry at him until I was almost thirty… when I realized it was never his fault, he was just doing the best he could with the situation he'd been dealt by our parents and the world."

"Like he always has, since that day," she says with a snort, shaking her head again. "And I'm sorry you're having to grow up so fast, I wish I could make things different, I wish we could let you be normal teenagers with normal problems. But that's not in the cards, it never was, for any of us."

"I was happy growing up," Maddie says after a moment, cupping the tea in her hands. "Mom and dad worked hard to make the house we lived in a happy place, and I miss them," she pauses at the recollection, taking a deep, calming breath.

"But Rick didn't take that from me and make me this way," she says shaking her head. "He rescued me and Jocelyn, and he let us choose what we wanted to be. He set us free."

"I miss my mom," Tony says into the pause, shrugging with an uneasy expression. "But I never really had family but her and my crazy in and out of jail uncle. When I came here, he didn't hesitate, just took me as I am and brought me into this family. He's helped me be more than I ever was or could be if I'd stayed in Georgia, and… and now I have Maddie, too."

Maddie smiles at him from a few feet away, and he looks down, embarrassed.

"You both wanted to be more," she says, pausing and looking at them each in the eyes for a moment. "You yearned for it, and Richard gave you that. Like he gave it to me and my sister. Like he gave it to the Horde."

"He also taught us that if something is important to you, you have to fight for it, or else you lose it," Maddie says with a serious tone.

"And this is our home, now," Tony adds, nodding moving next to Maddie and places his left hand affectionately on her shoulder. "So we fight for it."

"So we fight for it," Autumn agrees, nodding at them in agreement.

Richard is on the roof of the barn, slowly going through katas for Tiger Kung Fu, his eyes closed as he moves from one position to the next, focusing on breathing and balance. He pauses from the movement of a tearing swipe of his right hand which isn't there as a short pair of notes rings out from the front gate, clear in the morning air. He eases his stance and descends the planks sticking out of the side of the barn, his balance slightly off, though no one would notice looking at him.

As he reaches the back picnic table with his sweatpants and loose t-shirt a pair of men on horses draw up to the front of the cabin and dismount, then circle to the back where he is at. He pauses as he recognizes the taller of the two FBI Agents, two Agogites behind them for security.

"Allen, I haven't seen you in damn near forever," he says walking up and forgoing a shake with a hand he doesn't have to give him a quick man hug and step back. "Not since that barbeque at Benning, ten years ago, if I recall. You've managed to stay in shape. How's life treating you?"

"Michaels," the dirty blond man says from slightly above Richard, standing at six feet tall with Hollywood looks and a cleft chin. "It's good to see you, I'm glad things have gone well for you. I joined the Bureau after I left the Army, I'm now a Senior Agent in the Shapeshifter Division."

"Family?" Richard asks politely, smiling as he remembers serving with him.

"Wife and two sons," he says with a laugh, showing his wedding ring. "Stationed in the Dallas office. This is Agent Fredricks, he's from the Paranormal Division."

Richard nods to the other agent, a black man with a bit of a paunch and dressed like Allen in a middling level suit and a badge.

"I didn't know you were nearby, I might have reached out," he says, though he never would have for security reasons, being polite.

"That's all right, I'm busy with work most of the time," he glances around at the small town encased by the thick walls of the Bastion. "Is there someplace we can talk?"

"I can't have you in the house, and to be honest, I don't feel comfortable having you guys walking around inside for security purposes," Richard says, gesturing to the table. "I trust my people that are close enough to hear, so let's talk here."

Allen nods and sits across from Richard, pulling up a briefcase and opening it, removing a file and closing it.

"About half of what you have in there is redacted info, because of the missions and such, and you understand that," Allen says, sliding the folder to him. "Bottom line, there's only four people on this continent that meet your skill level for the shooter, two of them are women, and one of them is on the Secret Service Detail. Having looked at the scenario you laid out, we agree that there's a high probability it's the last one. I'm pretty sure you'll recognize the name."

Richard looks at the grainy photo paper clipped to a stack of military paperwork and pulls up the basic personnel info, his face hard as he reads through it. When he reaches the end of the first page he looks up at the two agents with a somber and serious expression.

"Well, now I know why they sent someone from the Shapeshifter Division, this guy's a werewolf or something similar," he says with a frown. "You and I know he was active duty Special Forces when the shift happened, continued to serve and helped stand up the Ghost Battalion, before going back to SF as a Sergeant Major, which is where he dropped off the grid during a mission gone sour. What happened?"

"He popped back on the grid almost a decade later, he was IDed after a hit in Alaska on a shapeshifter Alpha," Allen says. "We've gotten lucky a few times, tracking him when he hits the US, he's distinctive in appearance due to the scars the Lyc-V couldn't heal, we don't know why."

"Sometimes if it's silver it won't go away, but there are rare cases when a shapeshifter will hold the scar tissue, it's a thing the magic in our systems do sometimes, depending on the person," Richard supplies, going back to the file.

"Our intel places his base of Operations as being on the Indian sub-continent. We know he's in the US, we got a picture of him disembarking in Virginia. He's smart, he's got the skill set and he's ruthless," Allen says firmly.

"Has he ever missed a mark?" Richard asks, looking up at the two agents, who give each other a nervous look.

"You're the first," Allen say somberly.

"Well, let's see if we can keep it that way," Richard says with a deep breath.

Autumn is in the center of the Bastion, in an open aired courtyard covered in cobbles and about forty yards across in a circular pattern, the rest of the Bastion arrayed around it in a square. She has been using special chalk to mark the ground with the appropriate symbols in a ten yard circle, referencing a notebook at her side. She looks up from her work when she hears someone nearby cough politely, looking up to see Stan standing there with his white robes on and his staff which bares the carved head of an owl on the top.

Beside him is a man of similar features but younger and with pitch black hair, bushy eyebrows and thick beard atop a black robe, black glyphs stitched into the edges of the fabric. His staff is of dark wood compared to Stan's pale, nearly white wood, with the carved head of an angry looking eagle up top. Whereas Stan looks like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings before he hit middle age, the other looks exactly like what he is, a black priest to a dark god.

"Hello Stan, Jeb," Autumn says, grateful for a break in her work, hunching over for hours causing her back to cramp.

The man in black frowns at the use of his real name, being known to most simply as Blackguard.

"You requested our presence," Stan says with a smile, and she pushes her emotions to the side for the moment.

"Jeb, my brother would like to speak with you, he is at the barn waiting for you," Autumn says to the dark priest, who scowls, looks at her then his brother before storming away with a foul mood encircling him.

With the dark priest gone, Autumn relaxes slightly, and Stan turns from where he had watched his dark brother turn around a building and out of sight. He turns back to Autumn but before he can speak she has grabbed him firmly and kisses him passionately in the midday light. He does not protest, but enjoys the kiss after a moment of surprise, the openness and public display of emotion unusual for her. When they break apart a long moment later, Stan is gasping at the intensity of the experience.

"What was that about?" he asks quietly, his mouth smiling wryly.

"I just realized I've been letting things pass me by, that's all," she says, holding him close and lying her head on his chest.

"Well, I don't plan to pass by anytime soon," he says as he wraps his arms around her in turn.

"I can't tell you everything, those secrets are not mine," she says quietly.

"Yes, so I have surmised," Stan says with an amused smile she cannot see. "You are close to the Khan, though you will not say how. Same with Tony, also for reasons I do not understand, though suspect."

"Not my secrets," she says with a sigh, giving him a squeeze.

"Don't treat me as stupid, and we will be fine," he says gently, leaning down and kissing the top of her head. "If no one tells me, then I don't know."

She takes a breath and turns away from the comfort of his solid chest to look up at him, "Will you help me for a few minutes? The Khan will want to talk to you when he is finished with your brother."

Stan smiles at her, "I had guessed as much."

Richard is sitting on the platform of the Bastion, frowning in thought as he looks at the afternoon sky, leaning back on his right elbow as he orders his thoughts. He has spoken with the Black Vohl and made a deal to get the information he needs about the shooter's resources in town. He had cracked down hard on the city's criminal element, but the Black Vohls were exempt in the main, the balance between light and dark part of his agreement with the Russian magic users in the area. Usually frowned on and shunned, he is using their darkness to help track this man down by what kind of high end supplies he will need and getting info on possible hiding places.

He is pulled from his thoughts as he hears someone ascending the planks to the platform and he sits up as Stanislov climbs carefully onto the roof and platform.

"Khan," the Russian White Vohl says with a bow of respect, and Richard waves the man to a space across from him.

Stan moves a bit stiffly, but sits across from Richard, more of a sprawl than a comfortable cross legged position that the Khan has assumed.

"Autumn has advocated bringing you into the circle of trust," Richard says without preamble. "What do you think of that?"

"I am honored you think I am trustworthy," he says after a pause. "Some things I have guessed, but I know there is much I don't know, and never will."

Richard smirks, "Here is the truth, Stan. Autumn is my sister, we grew up together. I killed our father when I was the youngest of the children, a teenager. He was a wicked man, and the world did not miss him."

"I had guessed something traumatic had happened, and some sort of relationship like that between you," Stan says into the pause.

"More important, however, is that Tony is my son," Richard says flatly. "I didn't know about him until Autumn brought him to me after he arrived in town, and I have strived to be a good father since then."

Stan digests that for a moment before bowing his head solemnly, "I will not betray the trust you have given me."

Richard looks at him seriously with a frown, "If you hurt her, you will wish for death."

Stan smirks and chuckles dryly, "I would have been disappointed if you had not promised something like that."

Richard looks at the large circle crafted into the center square of the Bastion, hours of work laying out the pattern and filling in points and spaces with mystic items, animal bones, charged stones and other items of importance. He turns to Tasha with a pensive expression, the were-lion wearing sweatpants and a sports bra as night approaches and magic prepares to take control of the world again.

"Are you sure?" he asks, probably the tenth time.

She takes a breath and nods, "Yeah. I got this. Go take your spot, we need to be ready."

He leans forward and kisses her firmly before watching her kneel in the small circle within the circle and he strides to his own place in the circle, lying on his back. His heart is beating frantically and he takes a breath to slow it down, listening to Tasha's racing heartbeat not far off. He will be out cold for the duration of the spell, but his heart races because the one he loves and cherishes above all others will be enduring torment while he can do nothing, a sacrifice to heal him.

"The magic comes," Tony says quietly next to where Autumn stands, Stanislov the White Vohl at her side to watch over and protect her as necessary.

A pair of breaths later the technology crashes and magic floods the world, a bare breath later Autumn begins her chanting and Tony turns away, Maddie and three other Agogites in tow.

Tony is trotting on his horse with Maddie riding double behind him, the other Agogites jogging effortlessly beside them in leather vests, quivers, bows and weapons on their persons. Maddie has her vest on, the pair of fang daggers in the small of her back, gladius over one shoulder. Tony is in jeans and replacement leather armor over his t-shirt, the set from the other night being repaired at the Bastion. He is scowling through his mask as they ride, trotting to an old warehouse near the docks, what used to be the old Black Market district before the Khan destroyed it.

"Something's been nagging at me," Tony says twenty minutes after they leave the Bastion to look at the possible hiding place the Black Vohls had dug up.

"What's that?" Maddie says, speaking over his shoulder while scanning their surroundings, starting to transition to city from the forested outskirts.

"The demolitions on the building I was in," he says with a shake of his head, lost in thought as four Agogites watch the perimeter as they travel.

"What about it?" she asks, turning to look the other direction for threats.

"You said they never used tools where you were at, all claws and teeth, they didn't use the guns offered and lying around," he says with a frown. "But they managed to figure out primers, explosives and detonators."

"Maybe when fighting en masse they couldn't focus that well," she reasons, taking the opposite point.

He shakes his head, "They were fighting you, busy and dying and still able to wait until I was in the room to blow the place. They would have done it when I was under the arch, not in the room if they were actually smart."

"There was a spotter, blowing the place," she says, following his logic.

"So we missed one?" she asks, thinking through the trails she and the other wolves had checked.

"No, it wasn't an undead," he says with a frown and shake of his head. "I've been thinking of how dad would come at us, if he was on the other side, and it got me thinking of the bomb in the building. And I think the guy who is after dad was involved in it, he blew it up, as a test to measure what we are capable of. That's why they shot at you first on the way to the Bastion."

"Because of my jump," she says, sounding skeptical.

"It's a hunch… but…" he says with an unseen purse of his lips.

"Rick said that this guy was Army Special Forces and helped start up the Ghost Battalion, so we can't underestimate him," she says thoughtfully as well.

"I don't feel so bad bringing backup, now," he says with a nod.

Tony is holding his bow easily to his side as he follows the spread out shapeshifters, Agogites that trained together for months so that they know each others' movements, habits and intents. He did not participate in their training, but still received classes on the tactics and techniques used by the warriors of the Horde. So he can guess pretty well what they will do and recognizes the hand signals Maddie gives the others, which causes them to fan out and encircle the building as the two of them enter the front of the warehouse in what used to be known as Black Market Alley.

"Do you smell that?" Tony asks, tilting his head as he parses the scents drifting from the building, pausing on the front doorstep.

Maddie's head is up as her eyes study the building front, her nose fluttering, "It's magic, not wild magic, but close."

"Hold on," Tony says, pulling a charm from his pocket the size of an eyeball. It is a spell created by Aunt A that mimics the effects of an M-scanner, having discovered the pieces needed to make the charm while reading in the Rabbis' library. He pushes magic into it, and his sight changes, allowing him to see the magic spectrum.

"There's a non-persistent ward in place," Tony says, looking at the walls now.

"English, please," Maddie says with a frown, checking their trail.

"Someone coated this place to read neutral in the magic spectrum," he explains, frowning and deactivating the charm he had gotten from Aunt A. "All I know is there's magic inside, nothing else. The ward blocks the rest from being read."

"What level of magic are we looking at?" Maddie asks, her mind in tactical mode.

"No way to be certain until it's activated. Could be a trip wire spell, which is par for this guy," Tony says with an absent shake of his head, covered with his full headed Ghost mask.

"We could wait it out, but eventually someone will have to go in, and we're better suited than most to handle this guy, I think," Maddie says with a thoughtful expression.

"We should probably wait for dad, he'd want to be here if we confront this guy," Tony says.

"If the guy is as good as they say, he isn't here," Maddie reasons. "So there's no reason to drag our feet," she shrugs and heads for the front door, next to a rolling truck door.

"I guess," Tony says with a shrug, knowing that arguing with her about this is useless.

They enter the front room of the warehouse, a reception area with cheap thin walls and a large framed door to the right big enough for most pallets. Tony has his bow ready, but he cannot sense anyone nearby, giving the appropriate hand signal to Maddie to indicate as much. They walk through a cubicle farm towards the center of the warehouse and Tony stops in mid step as his sense that can feel magic causes him to pause.

"What is it?" Maddie asks, softer than a whisper, her gladius out from her back.

"Magic, it's stronger here," he says, looking around with narrowed eyes. "This way," he says, gesturing to the left and they go down a corridor until they arrive at the double door to a conference room.

Maddie pauses and gives a silent count with her fingers before opening the door outward and moving to the side to allow Tony a clear shot of the interior. He pauses and just looks at the odd item on the table in the center of the room, the rest of the room empty. It is the size of a footlocker, dark flat black material with a hundred or so glyphs and runes etched onto the surface. The symbols glow in a rainbow of colors, not dissimilar than the color spectrum on his scarred side, and with a set of distinctly separate symbols in the center which are blinking and disappearing. The meaning of the symbols and the purpose of the item hits him suddenly and he turns back the way they came, running.

"Bomb!" he shouts, Maddie faster than him by far catching up in moments, and she starts to reach down and pick him up, but he shakes his head, tossing his bow over his head to hang across his shoulder.

"No time," he says, turning the corner and spinning to wrap his arms around her, knife out that he quickly jerks down his right hand.

One arm around Maddie, he spins in a quick circle, blood dropping from the deep gash in his hand. The magic is sucked into the box from the surrounding area then explodes in a rainbow of fire that engulfs the entire warehouse with a shockwave strong enough to make the next door warehouses shift off of their foundations and fall. The Agogites outside are slapped to the ground with ringing ears from the explosion, then look on in horror at the conflagration that has engulfed the two people they were charged to protect.

Luang Xiang springs from the rubble of the warehouse behind the one the children of the Khan had entered, having been watching for anyone retreating from the building. The explosion had nearly shattered his eardrums and had sent him flying into the crumbling building next door. Now he stands with a hard face as he looks at the multicolored flames of the magic fueled blaze that used to be the building they were investigating. He steps closer to try and maybe search the inside, but the heat drives him back immediately, never getting within ten yards from the intensity and his inner tiger unable to cope with the uncontrolled blaze.

His arm raised against the bright light in the night he does not at first see the figure moving in the flames, but does notice a spot in the magic inferno dimming slightly. Then he can see the figure walking through the fire, arms outspread in front of him, and a second head next to the one centered on its shoulders. As the figure walks, he can now see that it is the Khanson, Anthony, with his fellow Agogite, Maddie, riding piggy-back. Anthony has his arms out and is pulling the magic from the flames around him, allowing him to travel without harm through the firestorm. The magic flames near him lower and snuff out to nothing as he draws the magic into his body, a misty shimmering of the air from the flames to his fingers.

He watches as Anthony clears the fire and walks to him, then stumbles and falls to his hands and knees, gasping through his mask, half of it glowing from the light of the scars beneath it. He rolls to his back while gasping, pulling his mask off to show the light of his scars are flaring brightly in the night, the magic colors roiling and boiling quickly across the scarred tissue.

Maddie is bent over next to him after dismounting when he fell, her hands on her knees, sweat pouring over her bare arms and face, eyes screwed tight and jaw clenched hard.

"Are you alright?" Lu asks after a few moments, astonished.

"Just need a moment," Maddie says in a rough growl. "You know how much we dislike flames."

Lu nods understandingly, the presence of fire driving weak willed shapeshifters into a crazed state of loupism that makes them dangerous monsters rather than a person. Anthony is still breathing deeply on his back, the muscles of his body tense still.

"I will gather the others and guard until you are ready to proceed," Lu says firmly, turning and protecting them, marveling at their survival.

"You okay?" Maddie asks when Lu is far enough away to not hear her low tone.

Tony only cringes and keeps his hands on his ears where he had put them when Lu had spoken, his eyes screwed shut tightly. He is gasping and breathing hard against the pain he is feeling and he rolls to his side, away from the fire and on his unscarred side.

"Hurts," he gasps out. "It's too much… too much," he stammers out, shaking his head.

Maddie is at his side trying to soothe him, her mind drawing a blank for a moment as to what to do, afraid to touch him and cause him more pain. Then a lesson she had from Aunt A pushes to the front when she had learned the basics for magic, even though her talent and potential in that area are weak.

"Tony, you need to ground out," she says slowly and softly, on all fours next to him, trying to draw him out of his clenched, painful position. "Ground out, Tony, ground out."

He takes a pair of breaths while nodding, rolling to all fours and his hands flat on the ground as Maddie backs up to give him room. She can vaguely sense the magic radiating off of him, her sense in that spectrum undeveloped and weak. Suddenly she feels a surge and her ears pop as Tony screams at the ground, releasing his pent up energy into the ground, sending it back to the earth and Gaia.

The magic radiates out from where he is kneeling, and the flood of magic forces her to change, much like Gaston's magic had prevented her from changing. She snarls as she shifts while standing clenched up, against her will and she raises her muzzle and howls at the sky, long and loud. She lowers her snout, the dragon hide vest over her chest and stomach, hand like claws at her side as she looks down and marvels at her hybrid warrior form, standing six feet tall. She has only ever shifted between human and wolf form, never warrior form, that level of experience, power and skill beyond her, until now.

She snorts as she looks around at her surroundings, her senses heightened more than usual as well, and she can tell the other Agogites have also shifted into warrior form, though Lu was the only one that could do that before. Before she can categorize and wonder at the revelation, though, she hears another sound in the night, not the roar of a tiger or lion, nor the howl of a wolf or laugh of a jackal, but a deeper, throatier roar than even Richard's, a bestial bellow into the night. Hearing the sound, she knows it is not one of the Horde, it is the one who tried to kill Rick and almost killed her and Tony tonight. And for a moment she is not sure who is hunting who…

Tasha is breathing nervously as Autumn continues her chants, setting up the circle around them and Richard, her eyes closed as she concentrates on the magic. Right now Tasha only feels a natural tightness in her chest, knowing that something terrible is about to happen to her, something painful, and there is nothing she can do to stop it. No, that is not true. She could still back out, Richard had offered often enough, and Autumn's honest assessment of what she will endure had not been heartening. She could step out of this circle and another would gladly step in, an Agogite, or one of the others of the Horde who practically worships the ground the Khan walks on.

But she cannot do that, because even though what she had told Richard was true, that she needed to win more support from the Horde as an equal partner and mate to him but that was not all of it. She needs to do this for herself and for him, because those that doubt her and dislike her are right, she had been weak and needy, and had betrayed him. He does not see it that way, holds no grudge and sees her as no less than she was beforehand… but when she looks in the mirror her own eyes judge her, and she is found wanting.

Autumn had said that the spell would keep her conscious, no matter how much pain she endured, her body's natural response of passing out turned off to cause more pain to harvest for the spell. The soft glow of the runes patterned on the ground increases and become brighter, and she tenses in response, bracing for the pain. No amount of preparation could allow her to brace for the wave of agony that hits her and she roars into the night as every nerve in her body feels like it is set on fire. Her vision turns red…

Autumn almost loses concentration on the spell as Tasha's roar of agony splits the night, fierce and angry and striking at the hind brain's instincts to run and hide, a predator is nearby. Her initial shock recedes as she continues the chant, focusing only on the words and the magic, all other distractors blocked from her mind.

Maddie leads the small group of Agogites that trot around Tony on his horse, trained to handle shapeshifters but still a bit nervous at the teeth and claws around it. They pass the Viking longboat and enter the Bastion, the magic still up and the spell still underway. Maddie stops in front of the cabin as she looks at where Thor and a small group of Vikings gather, Thor in his scaled armor and red cloak.

"Go check on Aunt A, I'll talk with Thor," Maddie says as Thor starts to walk towards them.

Tony reaches out his left hand and rubs her furred head and ear affectionately, then walks his horse to the center of the Bastion, where the spell circle is inscribed.

Maddie takes a few steps and meets Thor, looking him in the eye at an even level, now standing just over six feet with thick black hair bristling over her well-proportioned warrior form.

"Good evening, Thor," Maddie says in a barely comprehensible growl, the best she can do in this form, still a new experience to her.

"Madelyn, well met," he says as he takes her forearm in his as her clawed hand wraps completely around his wrist and pauses, glancing at the rest of her. "You look… well."

Maddie snorts, an odd new sensation with her muzzle, "We had an incident earlier this evening. What's up?"

"I came to witness the Khan's rise from the spell," Thor says, gesturing to the soft glow of light in the night at the spell. "Odin and I both feel the pull, called to bear witness. We do not wish our home undefended, so I am here and my father guards our halls."

"Why?" she says, barely understandable but her tone asking the question.

"I do not know, the last time we felt this pull, Baldur returned," Thor says with an uneven shrug. "An event is about to occur, something with great potential. Without the Norns I know no more."

Maddie only grunts at his statement, "Mischa?"

Thor nods, understanding the question, "She is coming. I had hoped to speak with her on the matter, as the Khan and Nimir-ra are unavailable."

As he finishes saying this Mischa appears a couple dozen yards away from a side alley leading to the spell circle, pausing mid step as she sees Maddie and continuing to them.

"Maddie, you look good," she says with an appreciative nod as she studies the lines and contours of the hybrid warrior form. "Good proportions, the hands are very well done and you don't have a large lump on the shoulders like some who bloom early do. Very good."

Maddie tries not to shy under the praise, glad a blush would not appear on her fur covered face, though Mischa can probably parse out the scents of her body.

"The warehouse was rigged, magic bomb," Maddie says around unfamiliar fangs, barely comprehensible. "Tony absorbed the magic and had to push it somewhere, and when he grounded out, all of us nearby shifted to warrior form. The other Agogites are just as well proportioned as me and Lu now."

"That's interesting," Mischa says thoughtfully, Thor nodding as well.

"We also heard a roar, not far off, I think it was a bear, and it wasn't Horde," she adds with a gesture. "I think that's our guy."

"Well…" Mischa starts, but a blare of the front gate's horn interrupts her and they all listen to the notes in the night.

"Rangers on the way to the gate, full gallop," Thor murmurs thoughtfully as Mischa starts moving to the gate.

"Open the gates!" she yells, and the guards comply in time for the pair of Texas Rangers to ride through the gate without slowing, reining in their blowing and snorting mounts a few yards from Thor, Mischa and the werewolf warrior of Maddie.

The Rangers are cursing for a moment, the horses obviously not well trained to handle shapeshifters in any form, and the older of the two, one Mischa recognizes as a friend of Richard's, speaks as he fights to keep his seat.

"There's some things running rampant downtown, killed two dozen civilians, and six cops," he shouts over the snorting of his horse, still bucking and barely controlled. "Some sort of undead, humanoid and fast, durable as hell, too. Arrows just piss them off, and we can't chop them down or pin them with spears. We've sent riders to the Order and you for help."

"Thor?" Misha asks, turning to him with a quirked eyebrow.

"I cannot, the magic calls for me to remain, to witness the Khan's emergence, and I can tell it will be soon," he says with a shake of his head.

"I'll handle it," Maddie says with a toss of her shaggy head. "I'll take Lu and his team, we'll take them apart."

"You should grab Tony, in case -," Mischa begins, but Maddie cuts her off.

"Tony exhausted himself at the warehouse, I could smell it, I'm amazed he didn't fall asleep on the way here," she says, having already signaled the Agogites she had been with to close on her.

"It was a feat worthy of tale," Lu says with an appreciative nod of his large tiger/man head. "He walked through the magic fire as though it were nothing, absorbing its essence into himself. It was glorious."

"Most impressive," Thor says with a nod, understanding the meaning more than the others, Mischa tilting her head in curiosity.

"I'll gather another squad and send them after you, wait when you get there for them to arrive if you can," Mischa says, pointing back the way the Rangers came. "They'll leave in ten to twenty minutes."

Maddie hears her but has already broken into a run with the other Agogites, a long loping run as power fills her veins from the change and she runs towards the city center.

Tony is exhausted as he slides off of his horse, not far from the edge of Aunt A's spell, bow across his back with his quiver and sword on his side. He is sorely missing the handed down armor from his father right now, the leather loricated armor badly damaged in the explosion a few days ago and still being mended. He is not actually sure it can be mended, and he may be stuck with using leather vests or find another armor substitute. His mind wanders along that course as he walks from his horse to where Stan is standing in his white robes with a pensive expression on his face, watching Autumn in the circle.

"How's it going?" he asks, taking a deep breath as he opens and focuses on the sense that allows him to detect and feel magic.

"I think it will culminate soon," Stan says with a frown. "The ward is too dark around the Khan and Tasha, I don't know what is happening to them, but I can feel that the spell has nearly run its course."

Tony narrows his eyes and nods agreement, "I think it'll break soon. The magic coming from Ms. Nash is tapering off, she's likely been tapped out of potential power."

Stan nods, "Autumn had said that rather than a flashy surge at the end, it would be a tapering off, as Tasha will live after the spell, not die as a sacrifice."

"Well, that's good," Tony says, turning as he sees Thor and Mischa walk up to them.

"I am here to bear witness," Thor says in an oddly formal tone, Mjolnir held at his side.

Tony glances at where Krigsherre, Richard's Norse katana, is sticking in the ground not far away, then back at the god of thunder and storm. Thor is frowning in thought as he studies the dark blue, nearly black sphere inside the ward obscuring Richard, a deep red one covering Tasha.

"Tony, what can you tell us?" Mischa prompts, and Tony glances at Stan, to which she nods him to continue.

"It's tapering off, and I recognize the feel of it from the night Ragnar did his spell," he says with a glance to the sky as he activates the charm to let him see the magic in the color spectrum. "It doesn't bear Norse runes, but has a pale coloring to it, human divine filtering in from somewhere," he says glancing at Thor with his dimly glowing vision. "Thor has a similar, but brighter, coloring."

"He is manifesting, in conjunction with the spell," Thor says with a firm nod. "It happened to the others that were changed in our lands. A spell, either random from a magic surge as it returned to the world or as an unforeseen side effect of a spell worked normally. The target became the manifestation of one of our figures from the tales of olde."

Tony shifts nervously, turning off his vision as that statement sinks in, and he waits with the others as the spell fades further, the light around the ward finally dissolving and breaking. There is little fanfare with the completion of the spell, just a slight overpressure of magic as the spell ends that Tony can sense with a raising of hairs and goosebumps. Autumn is in her small circle within the ward, ground amethyst and bloodstone used to draw the designs within the salt ward, hers one of the three equidistant circles surrounded by complex glyphs, symbols and runes.

She sags and starts to fall, but Stan has rushed to her side, catching her before she falls, her hands still gripping her ancient staff. Tony is looking to where his father is, having been lying on his back, but now rolling to his side and onto his feet. He looks mostly the same, stubble on his head and face, chest bare and a pair of sweatpants on, but where his right arm had ended in a stump, it now bears a black scaled hand with short claws on the end. Richard is studying the black wrist and hand, the exact same size as his hand before, but the texture and nails wrong, as is the additional bone protrusions on the knuckles of his fingers.

"Well, that was unexpected…" he says absently as he turns from his hand to where Tasha is lying curled up on her side, naked in human form, unconscious.

Richard looks pensively down at where Tasha is lying on the thin mattress on the infirmary's bed, still unresponsive and covered with a blanket as Stan looks her over. He pushes the concern from his mind as he turns to Thor, waiting in the hallway for him.

"Why are you here?" he asks, having not spoken except to ask Stan to help with Tasha.

"You are now part of our Mythos," Thor says simply, tilting his head at him, a frown on his face as he tries to explain. "You are a manifestation of one from the stories of olde."

"What does that mean… _exactly_?" Richard asks, nearly growling the words.

"You are either Aesir reborn, or one of the subjects of our Mythos," Thor says bluntly.

"Do I look different in the spectrum?" Richard asks, looking at Tony who has followed them.

Tony ducks his head a fraction at the attention, "Your aura is fainter in color, but stronger, like you have extra magic, but nothing else stands out. My best guess is you got an inject of divine power into what you already have as a First."

Richard frowns, glancing at Thor, "Lady Sif was a normal human before she changed, her power and ability level rose significantly when she changed. Her persona only tweaked, am I right?"

"That is correct," Thor says with a nod. "She was always brave and upright, the best of our shield maidens."

"Well, I feel no different, and it seems I just have a bit more power than before," Richard says with a shrug, glancing at his hand. "I'll figure it out later, I have bigger fish to fry right now. Tony, what did you and Maddie find at the warehouse?"

"A bomb made of magic, and I have no idea who built it or how," he says with a frown and shake of his head. "It was wild magic and powerful, dropped the whole structure and set it all on fire, flames taller than me."

"How did you get out?" Richard asks, glancing around for Maddie, stiffening with worry.

"I cast a small blood circle for me and Maddie," he says reassuringly, taking a deep breath. "I absorbed the magic flames as I carried her out. Then I grounded out once we were safe, forcing all nearby shapshifters to change. They all have warrior forms now, by the way."

Richard blinks at the blank, simple description of the action, "Well, that's not something that happens every day."

"It happened to Ms. Nash when she jumped in to save me from the fire that burned me," Tony says with a frown and uncomfortable shift as he spares a glance at her unconscious form.

"The Texas Rangers sent for help downtown, some sort of attack on civilians in the apartment complexes near the wharf districts," Mischa says with a gesture towards the harbor. "Maddie took those who had gone with them, and I was preparing to send another dozen."

"Keep them here to protect Bastion, I'll go help," Richard says automatically, moving back to where Tasha is lying still on the gurney.

He leans down and gently kisses her forehead, tenderly stroking her cheek before looking up at Stan.

"The magic drained her completely, dropped her into a coma, she may come back when the tech returns or the next magic wave, I have no way of knowing for sure," he says with a frown.

"Do what you can," he replies simply, turning and leaving the medical wing under the Bastion, Krigsherre in hand.

Maddie is running full out down the street, hopping effortlessly over halted vehicles and dodging horses, carts and wagons traversing the late night streets. She wants to do recon, but those Rangers smelled of fear and worry, not to mention that innocents have already died tonight and others need help. She turns a corner to downtown and assesses the six lane wide concrete and cobbles in a measured glance, left to right.

A hundred yards away are three knights from the Order of Merciful Aid, one she recognizes as the bigoted leader Daniels in his gray leather armor and a longsword flashing out at his opponents. The other two are mixed among the odd looking undead things, human in appearance with glowing green eyes, black oozing from wounds and zombie like in appearance. They do not move like movie zombies, though, they move as fast as normal humans and have a sense of self preservation, dodging and blocking blows. She watches as Daniels slice open a dead man's shirt and spill its intestines, but the creature still grapples with the Knight Protector, leader of this chapter of the Order. Daniels holds the monster at bay while pulling a dagger and stabbing it in the base of the spine, causing it to go limp.

"Spine and head are weak points!" she snarls at her fellow Agogites as they sprint forward and into the crowd of the monsters.

Some of the zombies are old, rotted as though pulled from a cemetery while the bulk of them are obviously victims that have turned, dressed in normal clothing and lacking the rot like the others. She rushes in a few yards from Daniels, reaching out with her clawed hands to grab a skull in each hand. She lifts the struggling creatures up and spins them while squeezing, and after a few moments the craniums pop in her grip.

Daniels pauses when he sees her, and she tosses one of the bodies over his head and into another pair that almost tackle him from behind.

"Eyes on the bad guys!" she snarls in a mismash of barely understood words, and Daniels visibly shakes his head before turning away and back to the fight.

Maddie returns to the crowd of the creatures, estimating there are around forty or fifty of them here now, meaning that the number of victims has risen. She jumps to the top of a parked car and looks to where there are some of the monsters moving away from the fight, presumably to find more victims and spread the curse.

"Lu! North end, stop them from spreading!" she shouts as she leaps to the south, tackling and ripping the head off of one of the zombies, then lunging for another.

She has decapitated the sixth and final one from escaping and looks back at the main group that Daniels and the others are dealing with. The other two knights with him are together fighting back to back on the sidewalk, one holding up a ward to protect them while the other fires a crossbow through the ward. The blue energy of the circle flares as the bolts fly out, but except for the occasional head shot, the two knights are not much help.

She starts to run that way when flashes of movement drop from the sky and strike six of the animated corpses in quick succession, causing her to look skyward. Tony is on Trixie, her purple flying mount, flaring out as it comes to land next to Maddie. Tony is able to dismount before the flyer takes off again, not fully trained for battle, and conditioned to return to the Bastion if not being ridden.

"Khan's on the way, Thor is a few minutes behind me," Tony says through his mask, this one a solid dark red.

"We're about done," Maddie says as she grabs another creature and crushes it's skull in her hand, glancing around at the now half dozen monsters being finished off by the shapeshifters and knights.

"What took you so long?" Daniels sneers at Maddie, even though she is taller than him by a few inches. "We were here in five minutes, and you took almost an hour! I've got three wounded up the street, and only Korton's attraction glamour kept them from spreading. As it stands we lost a hundred civilians!"

"You're welcome," Maddie says in a low growl, glaring at the human from below her bushy brows.

Daniels raises his sword between them at her tone and his own stance shifts, seeing her as a threat now.

"Easy, Knight Protector, we're just here to help," Tony says as he steps into the two yards separating them, his southern Georgia accent causing Daniels to give him a solid look.

"Archer, running to the bodies for a quick buck, I see," he says with a frown at the shorter and younger man. "Where's your teen wolf partner? Couldn't make it because it's a school night?"

"Graduated already," Maddie says with barely controlled anger. "I'm studying to KLEP out of some college courses."

Daniels does a double take, not having identified the werewolf as a female or as Maddie, the difference in appearance so drastic from her human or wolf form.

"My mom used to say that it's easy to insult someone when they ain't there, than it is to their face," Tony says, sounding for a moment like a quote from Dukes of Hazzard. "Also said people are brave when they know there's no consequences to what they say or do."

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" Daniels says with a frown at him.

Before Tony can answer a shout comes from Lu.

"Movement above!" he roars, a dozen yards away, having moved back towards Maddie with the fight finished.

Above them are dark shapes crawling on the walls of the building, humanoid in shape and crawling like spiders but with elongated human heads, dual rows of sharp teeth in their mouths and black claws for fingers. Though looking very similar to vampires with their sinewy and apparently dried out bodies, they have stretched heads giving them an alien appearance which is accentuated with glowing green eyes instead of red.

"Vamps, but different," Tony says, looking skyward with his bow at the ready.

"How many?" Maddie asks as figures release their holds on the second and third stories and drop to the street and surround the knights and shapeshifters.

"There's a lot more coming," Tony answers, his eyes glowing faintly to see the spectrum as more of them climb over the ledges and follow the others.

"So, we're not done," Maddie says as she gathers herself to leap at a trio of quasi vamps. "Got it."

Tony fires another arrow, catching two vamps with his shot as it is black fletched and passes through the spine of the first undead and into the skull of the one behind it. He is timing his shots carefully while moving around the battlefield to avoid getting too close to the monsters, wearing only a leather vest from the Bastion with jeans and his gear. He shifts his grip on the bow and ducks a swing from a vamp then shuffles to avoid the tackle of another. He punches with the bow then flips it and hooks the string around the neck of the passing vamp and pulls, the string meeting resistance at the spine then sliding the rest of the way through. The body flops to the ground and Tony is working to not get slashed open by two more as the head rolls away.

He flips the bow over his head to sling across his chest diagonally and draws his katana smoothly in a follow through motion. He slashes and parries more smoothly with the enchanted sword, blue lines of electricity along its length. He has slashed the head off of a fifth vampire when a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder comes from the sky a moment before a sheet of lightning cracks down both sides of the street, vaporizing the vamps still climbing down from the roofs.

Tony is blinded by the sheets of energy, staggering back from the light and sound, the concussion painful to his ears and sensitive skin. He is jerked to the side and sharp pain lances across his thigh as he falls to a knee with his sword raised defensively before him. He hesitates in pain for only a moment then immediately begins to swing the sword around himself in the practiced defensive katas the Xiangs had taught him and his father stressed.

He feels resistance from time to time over the course of the dozen breaths it takes him to clear his vision, at which time he finds severed limbs around him from vamps that had tried to attack him. He finishes the last swings of the set and pauses as he looks around his surroundings. Thor has landed in the open area next to where he had been fighting in the melee, the shapeshifters and knights spread out so as not to bunch or interfere with each other. Tony takes note that the knight in the ward with the crossbow is out of ammo and the two are now spectators to the end of the fight.

"Ahh, good," he hears someone say in a normal tone of voice, two buildings down and on the second story.

Before he can say anything in warning to the others, a single word of power erupts from the same place and Thor roars to the heavens as magic hits him. His cape billows around him as he staggers to the side, Mjolnir dropping from limp fingers as he grips his head in pain. He stumbles into a car, knocking it aside as he staggers as though drunk, then falls hard on his face, his hands still gripping his head as he falls.

Tony has sheathed his sword and is pulling his bow from his back as he jogs not towards Thor beside him, but where he can see the magic originating from, as well as the dark purple color of the magic with the charm he's activated. Maddie is moving towards Thor, but Tony yells over the suddenly silent street.

"There's a sorcerer or something in that building," he says without pointing, instead firing a blue fletched arrow at the figure he can barely sense with his still recovering senses.

The arrow flies true and hits the figure, who barely flinches at the impact as Maddie shouts orders to the others on the street. Before they can react, power strums again, this time as a phrase spoken not a single word as before. Tony turns now to the bodies of the creatures they had killed, the magic now filling them and animating them once more, forming them into golems of flesh and bone.

"Tony?" Maddie asks, her eyes flashing back and forth at the rising fallen.

"Not undead, golems," he says, flipping his bow to his back once more and drawing his katana to behead a nearby corpse whose head had moved back into place and reattached.

This time instead of standard meat and bone resistance, he meets a brittle hardness, as though the surface skin and another half inch of the flesh has hardened to flexible bone. He turns and attacks again from the other way, this time with the blade glowing blue with magic, and severs the head again.

"Skin is armored, you'll need more than standard blades to do the job," he says, turning and avoiding the swipe of a reanimated vampire.

Maddie has picked up a risen corpse by its leg and is beating it's head on the pavement, the third slam crushing the head, but the body still trying to claw at her. She throws the body into another approaching her legs and leaps to the top of a car hood while pulling her gladius from her back, tossing it across to one of the Agogites who has only fang and claw to fight with. The werewolf snatches it from the air and uses it to hack away at the reanimated enemies moving in on him, slower than a human, but even more durable and difficult to hurt than before.

Maddie has drawn the twin daggers from her back, each blade eight inches long and with long handles big enough for her large, clawed hands. She lunges off of the car onto the shoulders of a monster and slashes while riding it down, the twin blades slicing clean through the neck and sending it tumbling away. She shifts and uses the claws on her feet to rip an arm of the still thrashing body then swipes down and removes a leg mid-thigh. She hops back from another of the monsters that lunges for her and she attacks again.

Tony is moving the blade around himself and moving closer to Maddie, fighting to compliment her movements as she does the same for him. They and the other mobile fighters move towards Thor's fallen body, trying to protect it as they fight the waves of advancing creatures which reconnect and rise again, though the brittle portions remain broken and they are reduced further to ineffectively spasm on the ground. The process is slow, however, and after ten minutes of fighting the new threat only a dozen are flapping ineffectively on the ground like grounded fish.

Tony is slowing, fatigued and the gash on his leg throbbing more and more in time with his heart as he loses blood. Maddie is covering him more and more as he misses attacks, or a parry swings too wide, taking gashes on her own arms and legs while claws ineffectively scrape along her vest. The shapeshifters are dealing quick blows then hurling the enemy away, allowing for some breathing room for the two humans in their midst so they are not simply piled under by the creatures.

Tony stumbles on a puddle of blood and guts, falling to his side and pain shooting up from his thigh, his head swimming from the constant exertion and his wound. He raises his sword and manages to lob the arm off of another creature, this one with the head of a vamp, torso of a person and one arm of another vamp. He is out of position to stop the creature from getting to him and he drops the sword as he grabs the wrist and neck to keep from getting gutted or bitten, falling on his back as he does.

He pushes his good leg up and thrusts the monster away from himself, Maddie now there to grab and hurl it angrily against the stone wall a dozen yards away. Tony reaches and grabs his sword, pushing against a car to stand, swaying and swallowing on a dry mouth as he sees that one of the Agogites is down with an arm missing, Lu and the other with a dozen gashes on their bodies. He despairs for a moment, but pushes the emotion away and raises the sword instead, refusing to give up and let fear hold him down. As his father has said, _Fear profits a man nothing_.

Richard is sprinting down the street and is nearly downtown, his emotions a mixture of anger against the one who has attacked him and the innocents of the town. Anxiety for his children, adopted and natural, who are already in harm's way with the others of the Horde with them. The frightening aspect of his feelings, however, is not the furious rage or the slick worry… but the detachment from them, the cool assessment that grips him. Were he to look into his mind and soul as his enemy _that_ would be the aspect most terrifying…

Tony finishes tying the hasty bandage on his leg, Maddie and the other Agogites having flipped a pair of cars to make a hasty barrier for him to kneel behind and shove a quick healing spell at it to slow the bleeding and to throw on a Med patch. He is on his feet again as the first of the creatures drop from the top of the car to his right and he shoves his katana into its chest and pivots the blade to steer it towards the open area. He shoves his left hand onto the thing's arm, pushing magic into it and the monster bursts into flames conjured from Tony's magic.

"Maddie, toss!" he shouts, and the werewolf wearing the black and shimmering green vest turns and grabs the monster's shoulder despite the flames, then tossing it into the back of the mass.

The three shapeshifters fight at the opening of the V formed by the uprighted cars, the two humans behind and fighting the ones coming over the top. Tony parries and pushes a creature towards Daniels, who cuts the creature's head off, using his enchanted long sword in one hand, a dagger in the other. Tony reaches out and grabs the next enemy that Daniels has pushed his way, his left hand landing on its shoulder and he again pushes magic through his scars. This time the monster freezes solid, toppling to the ground and shattering into tiny pieces of ice. If Daniels is surprised, he makes no indication as the two humans fight in tandem to stay alive against the increasing stack of bodies that come over the barrier.

They are backing up towards the shapeshifters, losing space as the bodies are slowly piling up, reattaching and starting to move towards them as a group, except for the ones Tony has frozen and shattered. The shapeshifters are pushing the crowd back some as Maddie and the other werewolf slash limbs off with their blades and kick the bodies back. Lu is picking up a creature and using it as a club and flail before tossing his victim to the back of the pack.

Despite this, the movements of the seemingly indomitable shapeshifters are starting to slow, the continuous exertion coupled with the small injuries and wounds mounting. Were it any other shapeshifters, they would likely have run from the fight for survival, or fallen to the wayside already, victims of the damage their bodies had taken in addition to their labors. The Agogites fight on against their opponents, though their movements grow even slower and the precision they exercised at the beginning is growing sloppy.

Tony pushes another one with his hand and it falls and shatters like a porcelain vase, though he nearly stumbles from the exertion of the effort. He has put down a dozen that way now, but every time he does, it is harder and harder and the mounting cost is causing him to lose focus. He is rushed by two at once and only manages to partially parry one, falling beneath the two creatures, struggling to keep the one with a vampire's head from latching onto him.

His sword arm pinned under the one whose arm he lobbed off and the other arm holding back the neck below the snapping, slavering jaws, he lunges awkwardly and smashes his head into the one on his right. It jars the creature and he shifts his legs to partially kick it off of him, and it then slides away, someone pulling it off of him. He pulls his sword over into an awkward swipe and cuts the top half of the vampire skull clean off.

Clumps of brains and the sludge of the creature's blood falls onto Tony's face and mask, causing him to gag and choke as he shoves the body away and rolls in the opposite direction. He rips off his mask as he spits and hacks in an effort to get the undead remains out of his mouth, and as he does he throws up. He cannot fight it, and he coughs uncontrollably for a moment before vomiting again, pain starting to burn his mouth and sinuses. That is when he realizes what happened, he has been hit with the Imortuus pathogen, the disease that animates dead bodies into vampires, he now has it in his system and it is trying to kill him.

His stomach is empty, and his body tries to throw up again, but he is forcing himself to take deep breaths, fighting against the impulse nature gave him. Instead he repeats the mantra Aunt A had taught him if this ever happened. _I am in control, I am in control, I am in control, I am in control_ …

There is still fighting going on around him, shouting and yelling, but he cannot hear any of it, his focus is completely on his own body, pushing his perceptions ever inward as he uses his magic in an attempt to purge the invading infection from his being…

Maddie almost panics when Tony starts throwing up then starts hacking and shaking as he goes stiff on his side in a puddle of his own vomit. Almost, but not quite, though she does have a minute of refreshed aggression as she violently hurls the creatures away from her downed mate. She is starting to slow from the extra dose of adrenaline when the thickening crowd of monsters they are trying to beat back are all suddenly cut in half at the waist. She jumps back in shock at the result as the entire crowd jerks a yard to her right and fall to the ground.

She sees motion and follows Krigsherre as it arc back and cuts the back half of the crowd in half as well before continuing down the street to the Khan. Richard is running down the street in his warrior form, a seven foot tall hybrid of man and a tiger from ancient times, his canines large enough to kill an elephant or a wooly mammoth. He catches the blade in the air and continues to run to them as the bodies start to crawl and wiggle towards each other. Daniels moves to the side and shoves his dagger into the gas tank of an upturned car, then the other one.

"We need to burn them or break them into parts the size of an eyeball," he says unceremoniously. "Use the cars to contain this, we'll spill the gas and light them up."

"What are they?" Richard asks, looking at the mutilated and still animated creatures as he casually chops one in half and adds it to the pile before continuing to hack at them to keep them from rejoining.

"Himalayan zombies for the first group, Tibetan vampires for the second, and the last is some sort of flesh golem derivative," Daniels says with a look of disgust.

The shapeshifters make short work of using the vehicles to corral the remains as Richard darts back and forth on the pile, his sword rising and falling methodically to keep the golems from reattaching. The five cars are joined in a haphazard pentagon and Richard slashes the last back end of a car to spill the gas before hopping over the vehicles. Daniels has out a lit torch and he tosses it into the pile that has gasoline fumes among it, causing it to burst into flames.

Maddie has remained at Tony's side, watching him anxiously as he remains stiff and jerking, his eyes open but unseeing as he starts to foam at the mouth. She reaches to him but pulls back, blood from her own closing wounds dripping from her claws and she does not want to infect him with LycV on accident. When Richard walks up behind her, she looks up from where she is squatting next to him.

"What is happening to him?" she asks, her growling voice making the words hard to understand, though the tone is clear.

"He's infected with Imortuus," Daniels says as he steps up next to the Khan, sheathing his sword with a frown as he shakes his head. "He'll be dead in an hour or less. Damn shame too, I didn't realize his magic was that powerful, the Order could have used him."

"He's not dead yet," Richard says firmly, glancing around. "Who caused all this?" he asks, his eyes flashing a golden orange in the night.

"Tony said he was up there," Lu says, pointing to the building the archer had fired at. "Managed to fire one shot before the last wave came at us."

"Let's see if he got him," Richard says, leading Daniels to the building in question. "Lu, stay with Thor until we confirm the area's safe."

Richard and Daniels are standing in the room that Tony had fired at, both studying the small circle drawn on the floor near the window using a red and black powder. The circle is less than a yard across with complicated symbols made at six equidistant points in smaller circles two inches across. Each symbol is a different color, a different substance, and the lines are pencil lead thin, the overall circle and components obviously made by a master of his art.

"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Daniels asks, stopping by the circle and looking out the window.

"Not exactly," Richard says from his large frame, his right hand and wrist black and covered in draconic hide and scales compared to the rest of his body. "Similar, but not exact, when tracking down a dark priest in Africa. I think the stones used for the circle are the same, not the patterns."

"The patterns are from the Indian subcontinent region," Daniels says as he squats next to the circle. "A necromancer from that neck of the woods is nothing to take lightly. Only types stronger that I've heard of are the Chinese and the Middle Easterners. The only good thing about the People having their casino in town was that it kept their competition out of here and the city could call them to handle anything necromantic in nature."

"Nice, a subtle way of blaming me for this," Richard says as he moves on soft pads next to the circle as well, breathing deep through his nose.

Daniels gives an angry grunt and rubs the bridge of his nose, "I'm not in the mood to fight with you right now. One of my people is dead, and three are in the hospital."

"One of mine is dead as well," Richard says with a growl of his own. "And another is down there fighting for his life after risking it to save yours and other innocents."

Daniels closes his eyes for a moment and sighs, then shakes his head, "Let's put that aside, then. What can you tell me about the scene?"

"He smells wrong," Richard says, standing and towering over the lean six foot tall human. "Tony hit him, but the smell of the blood is wrong, it's spoiled, gone bad."

"He was sick?" Daniels asks, frowning in thought.

"No, not sick," Richard replies, shaking his head. "I'd say dead, but that isn't right, either. It's like the blood is a day old and congealed and tainted with something, not the Imortuus or LycV, but something else."

"Is there a sample I can take?" he asks, pulling out a small plastic bag to put a sample of the material making up the circle.

"No," Richard says with a puzzled tone. "There's no spatter, no bleeding. Tony might have used a flame arrow, but I don't smell charring or burning. It might have been a cold arrow that prevented bleeding, but then I wouldn't smell the blood as well."

"Kid really did have talent," Daniels says after a moment of silence, taking a second sample. "With one hand he turned a body into solid ice in the blink of an eye so cold it shattered when it fell. I don't think I've ever seen someone do that without a circle and prep work or a strong magic item."

"He's not out yet," Richard says, forcing not to growl at the man, the Knight not knowing Tony is his son.

"You've seen people infected, Michaels, and so have I," Daniels says as he looks up from getting the samples. "I'd bet you've had friends and comrades infected, just like me. A human cannot survive the infection, they don't have the innate power in their system to do it."

"You said it yourself, he did things you'd never seen before," Richard says in a calm tone, pacing by the window and guarding while the Knight works.

"It's impossible," Daniels says with a frown. "The sooner you all accept that, the sooner you can move on."

Tony finally becomes aware of his breath again as he begins to shift his awareness outward, gasping big gulps of air down a raw throat. He is rolling to his side and blinking spots from his vision as his fingers rub the rough concrete, something wet covering his hands. His vision returns slowly as does his sense of smell, telling him it is vomit and blood covering his hands and clothing. He can also hear more clearly now, as Maddie is breathing softly nearby, unable to speak quietly in her warrior form.

"I'm okay, I just need a moment," he rasps out, wiping his hand on the leg of his jeans before wiping his mouth. "Are we secure?" he asks on a dry, rough throat.

"The Khan has come, and we banished the last of the creatures," Lu says, his speech in warrior form rough but understandable. "He is walking back now with the Knight Protector from where you had identified the magic user to be."

Tony only nods, pushing back on his knees and resting on his heels as he breathes deeply, exhaustion dragging at his limbs and perceptions. He focuses on his breath for only a moment as he feels sleep suddenly drag on him and he forces himself to push himself up to his feet. He sways slightly as he stands, Maddie laying a large hand gently on his shoulder to help steady him, he gripping her elbow in turn. He takes a few breaths as his vision stops swimming and he reaches to his shoulder strap and pulls the tube down for his camelback to take a drink of water.

Richard and Daniels are striding towards them, and the Knight Protector slows to a stop a few yards away with a look of astonishment on his face.

"You survived," he says in a surprised tone.

"Yeah," Tony replies after a few long gulps of the cool liquid. "But I'm a bit out of breath. We'll file our paperwork to the Merc Guild on our assistance rendered to the Order later, after I've caught my breath."

"How is that possible?" Daniels says in a building angry tone, pointing at where Tony had been lying. "I've seen Electrum level Mages with teams try to fight off an infection and fail. How are you not dead?!"

He's nearly shouting the last, demanding an answer and the other two remaining Knights from the fight look up from where they are working, one counting corpses and cataloguing while the other is talking with Texas Rangers who have arrived on scene. The tone and body language of the senior Knight in the city causing them to first bristle, but then they look away, not wanting part of the confrontation.

"Lucky, I guess," Tony says, pulling a spare mask from a pouch on his belt and pulling on the black fabric. "We done here?" he asks, glancing at Maddie and Richard, both still in warrior form.

Daniels frowns hard at the young man then visibly regains control as he shakes his head and looks at Richard.

"I was here for the duration of the fight, I've got the details and will submit the report to the Rangers," he says, waving at the approaching trio of Texas Rangers, all with bows or crossbows. "By coming to us, this is now a case belonging to the Order of Merciful Aid. We will notify you if we need any information or cooperation."

"As much as I trust you, Daniels, I'll leave Lu here to give the Rangers a statement as well," Richard says with a nod to the large were-tiger, who nods in understanding. "And I expect some information on the samples you collected. This person is responsible for the deaths of innocent people as well as one of my Horde, and he will be held accountable for it."

Daniels scowls at Richard and stalks off to talk with the Rangers.

"Magic will be down in the hour," Tony says as he leans against a nearby car, battered and covered in gore from the fight.

"Will you be okay?" Maddie asks, her tone conveying the question more than her growled words.

"I'll need a ride to the Bastion, but I'll live," Tony says.

"Let me talk to the Rangers for a moment, and get you a horse to borrow," Richard says, walking with Lu to the Rangers as well.

Tony watches them leave and reaches out to squeeze Maddie's hand for a moment in reassurance while the Khan works out the details of getting him a ride and moving the unconscious Thor.

Tony is swaying in the saddle as he rides the horse into the Bastion, Maddie keeping pace behind the slightly skittish horse. He has never been this exhausted before in his life, not even close, and if it weren't for the throbbing of his injuries he would have already fallen asleep in the saddle. He reins to a stop with a wince in front of the cabin and takes a deep breath before painfully dismounting from the horse, a guard coming and leading the animal away. Jocelyn was sitting on the front steps of the cabin and is now standing next to him, and he blinks for a moment, having not noticed her approach.

"Hey, short stuff," Tony says, trying to sound upbeat but failing.

"Are you okay?" she asks, frowning at him in thought, then glancing at Maddie with a tilt of her head. "Maddie? What happened to you?"

Maddie squats down next to her little sister with a wolfish grin that would scare most but the eleven year old only smiles back and reaches up to feel the fur. Maddie holds still while the girl laughs while feeling the large head and hands of her sister, then oohing and aahing over the vest as well. Tony takes advantage of the distraction to head into the cabin, down the basement stairs to the complex underneath the Bastion. A few minutes later he is in the medical wing, where both Aunt A and Tasha are lying on beds, though Tasha is still unconscious, Autumn propped up on pillows.

Tony slowly pulls his mask off without prompting as he walks over to Stan, who rises from the chair he has been sitting in next to Autumn's bed.

"Is everyone okay?" Autumn asks, the stained clothing and haggard appearance telling her already.

"One of the Agogites, Marcus Anderson, died," Tony says, stopping at the foot of the bed and swaying slightly on his feet. "Plus a Knight from the Order, and a lot of civilians, my guess is around a hundred or so. And the guy that did it all got away… Oh, and I think Thor's in a coma."

"Are _you_ okay?" Stan asks, moving closer and meeting his eyes firmly, though he knows the answer.

"Uh, yeah, I mean," he glances at his blood soaked pant leg. "No, actually, I guess… I could use a patch, but the tech's back so…" he trails off, his mind drifting.

"Let me get you some stitches," Stan says in a reasonable tone. "We'll clean that out, check you over and get you set so you can get some rest. How does that sound?"

Tony allows the much older and experience man to lead him dumbly out of the room the two women share down the hall to another ward.

Autumn is sitting at the kitchen table in Rich's cabin, reading an old book with Stan sitting across from her, both with tea sitting before them. She looks up from the pages as her brother walks in the back door in sweat pants and t-shirt, while she and Stan are in jeans, and he leans his sword against the wall. He walks to the fridge and pulls out a beer before sitting down next to Autumn, popping the top off with his scaled right hand then laying it down in front of her.

"Well, that _is_ unexpected," she says in a distracted tone as she leans down closer to the hand and wrist. "Definitely draconic," she mumbles as she reaches out and touches the scales and claws.

"Also reflected in my warrior form," he says with a nod after taking a pull of his beer and letting her and Stan poke and study his hand and wrist. "We lost a lot of innocent people today. Thor was picked up by his people and sent to Odin. The spell that hit him is the same one that put me down when Tiamat came to town."

Autumn's gaze flashes at Richard, Stan's expression surprised as he does not have the details of that situation.

"He's dead," Autumn says firmly, glancing at Stan. "It's a long story, I'll explain later."

"It's not so long," Richard says with a shake of his head and looking to the other man. "The embodiment of the ancient goddess Tiamat from Babylonian lore came to the city to destroy me and the Horde. _He_ managed to put me in a loup coma for a while before I shook it off then managed to track him down with the help of the order and Mrs. Domasca, killing him in spectacular fashion while my people slew the monstrous dragon hybrids he'd brought with him."

"Oh," Stan says with a nod of his head. "This was when that Knight came to visit the family for a few days and I was out of town, wasn't it?"

Richard's face firms at the mention of the Knight, "Yes, that was it."

"That was Natalie Rushman, and she died in the final fight," Autumn adds solemnly.

"And the staff he carried is the staff that Autumn now carries, the Staff of Babylon," Richard says, gesturing to the ancient artifact leaning against the kitchen table. Autumn shifts uncomfortably as Stan looks at it with renewed interest then tilts his head and looks at her.

"Let me give you a minute," Richard says, realizing he has spoken too quickly.

"No," Autumn says with an uncomfortable frown and a firm nod. "We don't have time for that. We don't know this guy's timetable."

She folds he fingers together and looks solidly across the table at Stan and takes a deep breath before speaking again.

"I bear the Staff of Babylon and the surviving Tablets of Destiny and am destined to be the Mother of all Dragons," she says without pause, and Stan looks at her solidly for a moment before reaching across and taking her hands in his.

"So you have a little baggage, I can handle that. You've accepted my volatile family, I think this is peanuts in comparison, Father is a terror, after all, quite literally," he says with a smile, causing her to laugh and blush.

Richard smiles as well, glad for the break in the tension, however brief.

"As you can now guess, that is why Autumn has been tweaking and doing things to Max, as an outlet for the side effects she now has when using magic, and also as a way to learn to control it," Richard says in explanation.

"And this same side effect is what caused your hand to be abnormal?" Stan says, less a question than a deduction they are all sharing.

"It looks like it," Autumn says, returning her eyes to Richard's pitch black hand.

"Before we left, after the spell, Thor said I was part of his Mythos now, another side effect of the spell," Richard says with a frown, reaching up with his human hand to rub his scalp. "I want to know how the hell _that_ happened. I'm not a Viking."

"That is a great question," Autumn says with a puzzled look now on her face.

"I need to visit Odin, to talk about what happened to Thor, and I'm going to talk to him about that too," Richard says with a sigh. "I'm not tired from the spell or the night, I felt like I woke up after a great night's sleep, so I'm going to head there now."

"Let me gather my things and join you," Autumn says as she picks up her finished tea. "I may be able to help pull Thor through whatever it is that has afflicted him."

"I doubt they'll let you help, as I am pretty sure Odin knows your role with the staff," Richard says, Stan nodding in agreement.

"It won't hurt to offer and maybe consult," she says with a shrug.

"I'll change and we'll leave shortly," Richard says, rising and heading to his room to dress.

Richard is wearing his tactical vest with ammo pouches on it as he rides his horse down the final stretch of dirt road to the Viking settlement's front gate. The tech is up, so he has an AR10 rifle clipped to his vest, a .45 pistol on his thigh, as well as Krigsherre sheathed on his left hip along with a collection of smaller blades on his person. Autumn is beside him in her usual jeans and a light blouse under a thin grey wool cloak and staff holstered to the saddle. They do not ride alone, but six others ride with them, all Agogites and boasting gear similar to their Khan's.

The giant of a man at the front gate does not ask for their names or purpose, recognizing Richard and Autumn both, and simply waves to the other guards to open the heavy iron and wood doors set in a ten foot tall stone wall that bars entrance to the center of the Viking's land. Inside it is much different than what Richard remembers from his visit here immediately after he became a shapeshifter. Then it had simply been stone and log houses of mundane design and craftsmanship, sturdy but ordinary with dirt roads and paths. Now the roads are well cobbled and clean, the buildings sporting more knot work and decoration of expert artists and craftsman, the buildings shingled and giving the feel of a capitol city rather than a mere village.

They ride through the small city to the center, where a castle has been built of stone, not huge, but large in comparison to the one and two story buildings surrounding it. It is made of wide stones and rises in three tiers with ramparts on each with firing slits in the walls too high to be reached easily. The guards here and elsewhere patrolling the city are not uniform, but neither are they the ragged semi-barbarians of the years before. They now wear well crafted, modern melee weapons as well as firearms and armor to protect against both bullets and blades.

Richard dismounts in the small square in front of the main entrance of the castle, a young boy coming to lead it away, as others do the same to those who also accompanied him. He pushes the front doors open, leaning only slightly to make the ten foot tall, foot thick oak and iron barrier to move aside, his strength sufficient to open them without help. He strides down the short hall directly to the main room in the center of this level of the castle, the Audience Hall.

The Hall's interior is the size of a large church's, a ceiling arching twenty feet overhead of solid wooden logs bearing knot work as well as carved depictions of animals, monsters and gods. The walls are adorned with tapestries, reaching floor to ceiling and four yards wide apiece, depicting scenes from Nordic sagas. The exception is the far wall, before which sits a heavy oaken throne on a two step dais, a massive silver tree etched and depicted to have islands within its branches and roots, a representation of Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life.

Richard walks the sixty yards across the hall with his sister and Agogites following him, the dozen Viking guards within the hall bristling beneath their weapons and armor. He stops in front of the throne and looks up at its occupant, the one eyed old man who rules all the Vikings in this age, whether by birth or by choice. Solid in the shoulders, though his stomach is rounder in old age, his single eye is sharp and shows no weakness. Grey beard past his chin to his chest and matching hair slicked back as he leans back in his throne wearing jeans, plaid shirt and a green Carhart vest, his image matching the times.

"Odin," Richard says, standing firm and now bowing or kneeling as a subject would.

"My son has been delivered to me, and our healers look at him now," Odin says without preamble as he leans forward in his throne, Mjolnir sitting next to the throne on its large head. "He is afflicted by a curse, one I have not seen in ages, and not easily broken."

"The Order of Merciful Aid is processing evidence from the scene, and from what I am told of the other monsters involved in the attack, whoever did this is using magic derived from the Indian sub-continent," Richard explains. "They will give us their findings, I lost a man in the fight, as did they, and they were there when Thor was hit."

"I would like to help Thor, if you'll let me," Autumn speaks up as she steps up to be even with Richard.

"I am aware of the mantle you wear, Celt," he says with a slight frown. "I am not comfortable with you working magicks on my son."

"I understand, but I have knowledge and wisdom that may be helpful to his recovery," she says earnestly, to which Odin simply looks at her for a moment, assessing.

"Very well," he says with a nod, a guard emerging from a side entrance and leading her away.

When she is gone Richard speaks to what concerns him most from the activities of the last day.

"Thor said that when I emerged from the spell that gave me back my hand that I am now part of your Mythos," he says, holding the black scaled hand before him.

Odin smiles now, not a warm smile, but that of someone who has knowledge another does not and knows it, finding it amusing.

"You want me to tell you who you may become, in the days to come, what will happen to you?" he says, pushing himself from his throne with more ease than a man who appears to be in his eighties should be capable of. "It surprises me that you do not already know, as the others who have transformed knew the moment it happened to them. Lady Sif and the warriors three, Freya and Bragi as well. Perhaps I should not be surprised, though, as you have always seen yourself in this way, since the day I met you those many moons ago."

"What are you talking about, what way?" Richard asks, annoyed and losing patience.

Odin snorts and chuckles in amusement as he stands a yard from Richard, taller and looking across at him with a smile.

"Look at you, dressed and armed for war, you wolves at your side," he says, gesturing to his weapons and armor, then the Agogites behind him. "A man who demands fairness and justice from all he commands, and by his example showing the way forward for others. Do you not see who you are?"

Richard is frowning in thought, focused now on the riddle, light beginning to dawn in his eyes.

"Your hand lost in battle, champion over heroes and villains from all sides, master of single combat," Odin says as Richard realizes, and he speaks with soft authority. "You, Khan of the Horde, are Tyr reborn, the embodiment of war and combat in this age."

Richard shakes his head, "I am not one of your people, I can't be an avatar for one of your gods."

"Ragnar is an avatar," Odin says with a shake of his head. "Sif, Freya and Bragi are embodiments, shades of what they were, manifested in a human, as are you. Your power was already great as a First, and the little extra from my people is little in comparison at the moment."

"How did this happen?" Richard says, shaking his head in confusion.

Odin chuckles in amusement and leads Richard from the hall, both men leaving their guards as the old man brings them to a small dining room. The room is simple and rustic with thick wood furnishings, simple tapestries on the walls with a fireplace and a pair of chairs.

"Who do you think my men pray to before battle?" Odin asks as he picks up a decanter and pours himself golden mead into a mug, then another for Richard. "They pray for the strength and courage of the Khan, that's what they pray for. They ask me to watch over them in battle, but they wish they were you in the battle itself."

"I didn't know that," he says with a frown of thought, accepting the mug from the All-Father.

Odin smirks and lowers his mug from a deep quaff, "You defeated my son Thor in single unarmed combat with the magic up. You survived a Russian death curse and defeated an ancient god of chaos."

"Okay, valid points," Richard says with a toss of his head.

"Not to mention leading my son and my people against an unassailable city," Odin continues, gesturing to a chair as he sits as well. "In the process, killing Achilles, demi-god of war himself and master of combat, _as well as_ banishing that pantheon from the mainland."

"A lot of our men died that day," Richard says with a hard frown.

"And joined the halls of Valhalla, awaiting the day to serve as einjenhar when Ragnarok comes," Odin says with a nod. "They earned a death guard before dying and brought honor to their names, riches for their houses."

Richard shakes his head with a sigh, "It's just hard to wrap my head around, being considered a deity of war."

"Relax, you will get used to it," Odin says with a shrug, taking another pull from his mug.

Tony wakes up with a start in a tangle of covers, something warm curled next to him, and he sighs as he relaxes, his dreams horrible and haunting. Maddie looks up from where she is lying next to him, her brown eyes clear and filled with concern as he lowers from a startled sitting position to lying down again. He wraps an arm around her and pulls her tight as she snuggles into his chest.

"How are you feeling?" she asks softly as Tony glances at the window, afternoon light filtering between the blinds onto the floor.

"How long was I out?" he asks instead of answering, still trying to push the bad memories away.

"Ten hours," she replies, gently rubbing the unscarred side of his chest. "You pushed yourself pretty hard last night, especially fighting the infection at the end, you had us worried."

"I had myself worried," Tony says, pulling her tight against him and putting his face in her hair, taking a deep breath of her. "How long was I unresponsive?"

"Almost twenty minutes," she says quietly, and he can hear the worry in her voice, the hint of fear.

He gently lifts her chin and kisses her softly, pulling her tight and not complaining as she squeezes him in return, making it hard to breath for a few moments.

"I almost lost you," she says into his shoulder, tears wetting his bare skin, wearing only pajama bottoms.

"You didn't, I'm right here," he comforts her softly, stroking her back and her hair.

She sniffs and lets up, wiping her face with the sleeve of the pajama top she's wearing, "And Marcus is dead. He was in my squad for most of the Agoge."

"I remember him, from Clan Heavy, a good guy," Tony says, barely recalling the older man.

They lie together in silence for a few minutes, just enjoying the simple pleasure of being alive and with each other. Tony can sense a tension in Maddie, and finally she speaks.

"I think you should move in with me," she blurts out, her eyes focusing on the scars on his chest.

Tony frowns, "Is this about how my apartment is too small again?"

Maddie frowns hard herself, but doesn't move from her position at his side, head on his shoulder, "No, I was just thinking, we're pretty much permanent boyfriend and girlfriend, because you're my mate. And not being with you, especially when I want to sleep, is really _really_ uncomfortable…"

He leans down and kisses her forehead, "I love you, too."

She turns her head and give him a firm kiss, pulling back to look into his grey eye, "I love you."

She snuggles back onto his shoulder and takes a deep breath, "I mean it, though. It's only a single wide, but we can build an extra room to the side for a workshop or office, or whatever we need. It's not like I don't own it and have to bring it up to city code or anything."

"I'll think about it," he says, kissing her on her head again.

"Please do," she says, tilting her head to give him a look that he is incapable of saying no to.

Richard is standing next to the small fountain in the square in front of Odin's castle as Autumn walks up from the entrance, a dozen Viking warriors around him. Autumn is not worried, as the men are all laughing as Richard talks with them, being sociable and looking to be swapping stories with them.

"Your meeting with Odin went well, I gather," she says coolly as the group of men part to allow her passage.

"Autumn, I was telling them about that creature we killed in Florida, the floating head with the big eye," he says with a smile, gesturing to one of the men, then to her. "Brin, ask her if it's true," he prods the tall, red headed and lean man with a narrow trimmed beard, longsword on his hip and an AR slung over a shoulder.

"I did not say it was false, just that it was hard to believe, is all," the man says in a high tone as he defends himself.

"It floated a few feet off the ground and was a good six feet in diameter if I remember right," Autumn says as he tries to backpedal. "I fired too soon and the Khan here tackled it when it rushed me, with only a pistol and short sword. It had at least a dozen tentacles tipped with jaws of needle sharp teeth, like the deep sea fish you hear stories about."

"Something from fable," another man says with a shake of his head and a chuckle.

"From a tabletop game invented before the Shift, actually," Autumn says with a slight shake of her head. "I am old enough to remember, remember."

"Milady does not look a day over twenty winters," another man says with a grin, the other men fighting smiles.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, I already have a boyfriend," she says with mocking chastisement to the man, which everyone chuckles to.

"You come from Thor?" Richard asks, easing into a more somber mood.

"I do," she says with a nod, the other Vikings listening raptly to her now. "The curse that grips him is of the ancient language of magic, created at the beginning of the last age of magic. He fights to free himself, but he is unfamiliar with the battlefield they fight on. We can keep him from growing weak and dying, but there is little we can do to help him, he must break free on his own."

"I was under a similar affliction once, if you recall," Richard says, all the eyes and ears now turned to him. "Thor kept me from running rampant, and I was down for days before I pulled out. He will do so as well, do not fear."

The men nod and agree, reassured by his words, and Autumn is surprised at how deferential these men are to him. She knew that the Vikings respected him and the Horde due to their arrangement, but she has rarely seen him with more than one or two of them at once when they were not fighting for their lives. As they leave the men and head to the stables with the Agogites in tow, she lowers her voice to speak to him.

"That was a surprise, I didn't know they looked up to you that much," she says quietly so their conversation is private.

"Apparently, I am also worshiped," he says with a tight smile that has no joy in it.

"Whoa, hold it," she says, waving her hand and planting her staff on the cobbles as she stops walking. "Worshiped?"

"Yeah, worshiped," he says with a sigh. "Odin says before battle their warriors often pray for the courage and strength of the Khan."

"What did you do?" she says with a stern expression at him. "You are not their god. Make them take it back," she says firmly, like she occasionally did as they were growing up.

"I can't, what's done is done," he says with an angry wave of his own, her words working as well as they had back then. "And it's not like I got much out of the deal anyway, a little extra mojo is all, from the sounds of it."

Autumn leans forward and bops him on the head with her staff, "What did you tell me? Consequences, remember? The staff has some, and this will too, you know it will."

"Then I'll deal with it then," he says with a hard frown at her as he rubs his head and starts walking again.

"Well, who is it?" she asks, following him again to the stables. "Please don't be Loki, he's the bad guy."

"No shit he's the bad guy," he says then glances over his shoulder. "It's already done, do you really think I'm capable of being the trickster god of mischief?"

"Loki had plans in plans in plans, just like you," she counters, giving him a look.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he mutters as they near the stables.

"So who is it? Who are you a manifestation of?" she asks, slapping his arm.

"I am Tyr, master of war and unconquerable in single combat," he says in a tone that brooks no argument and he stops after saying it, having not meant to talk that way.

"Please tell me you meant to do that," Autumn says, looking at him with a dubious and concerned look on her face.

"I wish I could," he says with a frown then walking again.

"Tyr is not the worst guy to be but…" Autumn says, trailing off as they enter the stable.

Once mounted and out the gates from the Viking settlement, Richard sighs at her silence and prompts her.

"Okay, what is the 'but'?" he asks.

"It's hazy what happens to Tyr before Ragnarok," she says with a frustrated sigh. "I'll do research, but from what I remember he lost his hand to a monster wolf the Aesir tied up with a ribbon and he commanded the wolves of war."

"Well, I've already checked the box on commanding wolves, so I'll keep my eyes open for a monster wolf," he says, glancing at a nearby werewolf Agogite. "Oh, look, there's one…"

The two figures stand in front of the computer screen, a small camera sitting underneath it, sitting on a table in the barren room, only an old bed, a small couch and the table, the cheapest of hotels in the city. The two figures are in great contrast to each other, one is just over six feet tall with a broad, solid musculature, decades of hard physical labor making him tough, aging like teak. The same years have carved his face full of wrinkles and a thick scar across the right side of his face, his dark grey hair cropped into a flat top haircut and thick grey stubble on his rough, square jaw.

The other figure is a few inches shorter and narrow, his naturally olive skin paled to a sickly color, his eyes chalky but glimmering with a slight green glow. His clothing is modern, an expensive silk suit with a black tie over a dark green shirt compared to the simple black military field uniform the other man wears. The screen flickers and turns on, but there is no image, just a fuzzy screen that indicates it is turned on and the snap of the speakers turning on.

"Report," an accented voice says over the line.

"They responded to the downtown trap, but it was a mercenary, Knights of the City's Order and members of the Horde with the lightning prince that were first on scene, not the Khan," the man in the suit says, his accent matching that from the speaker. "When they stopped the first two attacks, I struck down the barbarian with the curse and animated the remains. They were nearly overrun when the Khan arrived and tilted the battle in their favor."

"Assessment," the voice prompts into the pause.

The two men tense and the old man speaks first, his voice hard and sharp, "He knows I'm after him. He has the contacts to put two and two together to know who I am and what I can do. I can take him if the tech is up, but it won't be precise, it will be very messy."

"I doubt I can break their ward on their base unnoticed, and I am uncertain I could kill him with his shapeshifters at his back," the other man says, all but admitting he is no match for the entire Horde. "But there is something else, milord," he adds, glancing at the other man before turning back to the camera.

"The mercenary, he was infected from one of my vampires, and he resisted the curse," he says simply.

There is silence on the other end of the line and the two men wait patiently until a few minutes pass and he speaks again.

"The plan has changed," the voice says with authority. "This mercenary, bring him to me."

"The curse will only hold the Norseman for a week at most, milord," the cultured man says, tilting his head to ensure he understands his master's will.

"We cannot dissuade the Khan from his course without a heavy cost, and a human with such potential should not be left in his shadow," the master says in way of explanation. "Your primary objective is to capture this mercenary at any cost. If the opportunity to end the Khan presents itself, then take advantage, but that is no longer a priority."

"Yes, sir," the old man says as the other nods his head and bows shallowly just before the connection terminates.

Tony is with Maddie in the training area of the Bastion, practicing a new kata for his katana that the Xiangs have taught him which he has not yet mastered. The Chinese were-tiger clan that integrated into the Horde years ago are disgruntled at the Khan's use of a Japanese weapon and similarly styled armor, but lost the argument and now tolerate it with displayed indifference. He is wearing baggy pants and long sleeved shirt with a plain black mask on as he moves, focusing on the precision of his strikes, blocks and parries. He slows and stops, facing to where Lu's grandfather and head of the Tiger Family is sitting cross legged and watching him, bowing low to the senior martial artist.

"Your form is good, you are learning well," the old man says with a nod, Maddie beside him in her own training gear of sweatpants and t-shirt.

"Thank you, sensei," he says with a nod of gratitude.

"You have not yet attained mastery, but you are proficient enough, that it would be wise to extend your training with us," the were-tiger says, his white hair and wrinkles prominent on his serene face.

"I am willing to learn, sensei," Tony says politely, and Maddie glances at the senior with curiosity.

"Sensei, he is not a shapeshifter, he cannot form his hands to claws as we can," Maddie says with a puzzled expression as she speaks clearly to the old master, Lu on the other side of the seated head of the Chinese household.

"That does not mean he cannot learn what we can teach him," the old man says patiently. "Tell me, Anthony, what happened during your fight last night," the old man commands with a slight golden flash in his eyes.

Tony swallows and takes a deep breath, "I fought with my bow, sword and even my magic to defeat the vampires, and then the golems. It was not enough."

The old man smiles and leans forward, "It seems that way because you lack training in what you attempted. I have heard tales of the magic you used from my grandson, I wish you to tell me of it, and how if felt when you used it."

Tony frowns in thought and looks at the mat as he recalls the details of the battle, "We were losing, and cutting them apart was not enough. I pushed fire into one, then Maddie threw it –."

"No," the old man interrupts. "The fire, describe it to me. Tell me what it felt like, what it looked like, in your eyes, not ours."

Tony takes a breath as he reaches for the words, very aware of his incomplete education, "It was like the magic in me keeps me warm, in a way, and I push it out of me, through my hand that was touching the golem, to set it aflame. It looked like, like I'd pushed some of me into it to make it burn."

"And then what happened?" the elder Xiang asks, a gesture to continue with the story.

"We continued the fight, and Daniels, the Knight Protector, he had pushed one towards me, but this time I used cold to kill it instead of fire," he says, pausing to describe the feeling. "It wasn't like when I caused the other one to burn, it was like… like I pulled the magic from it, as well as its heat. But it resisted, which made it harder and harder each time I used it."

"What happened to the creature you burned?" Xiang asks.

"I don't know, it was out of my sight after Maddie threw it," Tony replies with a shake of his head.

"It continued to move and fight, grandfather," Lu answers from the side. "It did not catch fire to the others, as they were not flammable."

"And what of the one you made cold?" he asks Tony after a nod at Lu's answer.

"It shattered when it fell and did not reanimate," Tony says definitively.

Xiang nods firmly at that, "Now tell me of the vampire illness you defeated."

Tony fights not to fidget or shuffle at the question, knowing the absurdity of the claim.

"The blood of a vampire fell into my mouth and nose, through my mask, keeping the brains and bone out," he says, taking a deep breath to center himself from the memory of the experience.

"Take your time, I do not want you to leave anything out or forget something," Xiang says, nodding patiently to Tony.

Tony swallows and takes another deep breath to calm himself, his heart racing at the memories.

"I threw up, and it hurt more than it should," he says as he remembers. "And I could feel something, I wasn't sure what at first, pushing into me, smothering me, starting at my mouth and face. But I could breathe…"

"Your aura was infected," Xiang supplies. "You felt the pathogen infect your aura and try to spread, go on."

"I remembered Aunt A say that if I got infected with Immortuus to fight for control, so I repeated that over and over again," he says with a shrug. "It was my mantra as I focused on my body and my magic, to fight and push it out of me. I don't really know what happened after that, I was so focused on not letting it get any further in, and then on pushing it back. It wasn't until it was gone that I started to regain awareness of where I was."

Xiang nods sagely and speaks to Lu in Chinese and the younger man leaves quickly, leaving Maddie and Tony alone with the old master as he rises to his feet.

"You are right, Madelyn, that he cannot form claws as we do," he says with a nod, looking between the two youths. "But he has magic of such rare power that there is much we can teach him to help him unlock his potential."

Lu returns with a woman from the Chinese Clan, in her late thirties, with classic Asiatic features and in traditional workout clothes.

"This is Ming, one of my granddaughters," he says and the woman bows. "She will be your instructor in the mystic arts that we have protected for thousands of years."

Tony swallows, "Thank you, sensei."

"You have proven yourself _worthy_ , young Khanson, continue to do so," he says simply, turning and leaving the younger folks alone to begin.

Tony is dragging as he enters the small house he is using on the Bastion with Maddie, exhaustion tugging at him and glad that he is only responsible for resting for the remainder of the day.

"How did the lesson go?" Maddie asks from the kitchen, in shorts and a pajama top, stirring chicken and rice with sauce in a Wok on the stove.

"Oh. My. God," he says theatrically as he rolls onto the couch in the living room and just sprawls there. "I have never pushed or pulled that much magic outside of combat before. I'm spent," he says with his arm flung over his eyes and his mask on the coffee table.

Maddie chuckles at the stove, a pleasant sound to his ears, "Well, you don't have Ranger School under your belt, and the Agoge is a bridge too far, so I'm guessing the Xiang Clan is planning on making up the difference."

"Do you think dad put them up to it?" he asks, unmoving on the couch.

"Nah, Rick wouldn't have to," she says with an unseen shake of her head as she fills two bowls with the stir fry, one much larger than the other. "Lu told me during training that his grandfather is very good at anticipating needs and filling in the gaps. He'd see it as his duty as the Khan's loyal subject to assist in the complete training of the son."

"And he's got six Agoge graduates in his family to help him push me, Ming being one of them," he grouses from the couch.

"She's fucking fast, I didn't know were-foxes were so quick," Maddie says with emphasis, bringing in the bowls and setting them on the coffee table, to which he sits up. "Beer, wine or water?" she asks as she goes back to the fridge.

"Just beer, please," he says, rubbing his face gingerly then leaning forward to enjoy the scents wafting off of the food.

She comes back with two beers and hands him one, picks up the bigger bowl and sits next to him on the couch cross legged. He picks up his own bowl with chopsticks sticking out of it with a small frown.

"I hate these things," he comments taking a moment to focus on placing them in his fingers. "We always used forks and spoons when I was growing up."

"We did, too, but Jocelyn and me never had Chinese food until we got here," she says with a shrug. "Rick used them, so we learned to use them. It's not so bad once you get used to it."

"How long did that take?" he asks, frowning as he concentrates on the sticks in his fingers.

"A few months," she says with a small laugh.

"Great, I guess I'll just have to suffer," he says, awkwardly picking up the chicken in his bowl.

Richard is sitting on the front porch of his house, listening to the rain pour down in the early morning, a hot cup of tea in hand as he simply listens and relaxes. He tenses for a moment as the horn from the front gate sounds, then relaxes as he recognizes the signal and patiently watches as the man gate opens and a pair of men in black trench coats and large umbrellas approach him at the cabin. Two shapeshifter guards are behind them with weapons and armor, guns as well as blades with the tech up.

"Hello, Jed," Richard says as he stands, the Black Vohl rising the few steps to the porch with a much older man beside him, his hair an iron grey in the pale light of the overcast morning.

"Khan, this my father, Obadiah," the dark priest says with a scowl, hating his brother for sharing his name with that damn Celtic witch and the shapeshifters. The two Vohls shake their umbrellas to the side and close them, leaning them against the rail and keeping their staves in hand.

"The location you gave me was a trap," Richard says simply, his face impassive as he holds his hands behind his back as he looks directly at the old man, the leader of the Black Vohls in town since the death of the last leader at the hands of the Horde. "My people were nearly killed investigating the site, a magic bomb that leveled nine buildings."

"You wanted information," the man says with a heavy Russian accent, scowling under heavy bushy brows and a bald pate that has a ring of iron grey hair ringing the sides and back of his head. "We gave you that information, we did not investigate as it is not our concern."

"I am making it your concern," Richard says to the man with a slight lowering of his head.

"My people are not involved, you know I speak the truth," the old man says angrily. "We are still recovering our numbers after your attack on our sanctuary, which killed many of my family members."

"You took the corpse of the former Pack Lord, and tried to raise a dark god among mankind, that could not be permitted," Richard says simply.

"Yet you support the Vikings in their rights and ceremonies," the man sneers, spitting to the side. "Spare me your high handed sanctimonious chatter, I am not so gullible as the others."

Richard moves his left hand from his back, folded papers in it, "A contract, money in exchange for the information I want."

"We took your money once, we have no wish to do so again," the old man says, shaking his head angrily. "We saw what happened in the city, caused by the ones who have come to oppose you. We do not wish to be their targets. We are not involved."

The old man retrieves his umbrella and walks back into the rain as he activates it, Jed following and doing likewise as Richard contemplates his next course of action.

"Maddie, this is ridiculous, I can take care of myself," Tony says with a frown, his arms crossed over his chest angrily in the living room of the small house they are staying in.

"I know that, but after the other day, I don't think I can handle you walking around town alone," she replies with a frown of her own as she straps her gladius to her back.

"Firstly, I wouldn't be alone, I'd have a squad of Agogites with me, not even counting you," he says waving at her in the dragon skin vest and armaments. "Secondly, I know how to fill out the forms at the Guild better than you do."

"Both valid points, but this guy has snipers during tech, and you don't have a bulletproof vest like I do," she says, poking her vest. "And if you get shot you don't bounce back like I can. Besides, you and Aunt A keep saying I need to learn the paperwork better anyway. So me and a few Agogites go fill out the paperwork on the zombies and stuff, you can keep training with the Xiangs, which is keeping you tired and off your A game in a fight, I can tell."

She says the last while touching her nose and daring him to argue with her, to which he sighs heavily and folds his arms angrily.

"I don't need to be coddled," he says with an angry frown.

"You're not, you're recovering, huge difference," she says with a shake of her head, coming over to him from where she had been getting her gear on, her tone softening. "Just like I did after Gaston captured me, you need to recover. Your system took a huge shock fighting off the Imortuus pathogen."

"You're quoting Aunt A at me," he says with a frown, taking her in his arms as she wraps her own around him.

"Because she's right, and you know it," she says, pulling back and putting a kiss on his cheek. "I'll only be a few hours."

Tony watches as she leaves, disgruntled at being left behind.

Maddie exits the Guild with a mixture of excitement and mental fatigue. She had finished the paperwork, which was a small mountain of forms and statements, of which she picked out the wrong ones initially and had to re-fill out on the right documents a second time. The entire process had been depressing and mentally draining as she recalled the names that Knight Protector Daniels had used to name the enemy they had fought. She is sparked with excitement, though, as she had checked the bounties for the zombies, vampires and golems, and discovered that being one of the primaries in containment had earned the Horde, herself and Tony a very large sum of money. The check will not come for at least a week, though, as it has to go through the local and State processes to get allocated under an existing fund then paid.

She mentally chuckles as she remembers a history class that said that Americans before the shift paid about a third of their income to federal taxes. That system crashed and the new one set up not long after, but total taxes are still over a quarter of a person's income these days, mostly going to law enforcement, military and funding contractors like herself to keep the people safe. That whole 'welfare state' system that was building before the Shift sorted itself out when Darwin awards were handed out left and right from magic monsters popping up randomly. The dumb lame and lazy did not last long in Post-Shift America, there were not any free handouts in this cut throat world.

She and the five other shapeshifters with her are striding easily down the street a few blocks from the Guild when the shot hits her in the back. The pain is immense, fogging her vision as she fights to stay in control and not involuntarily shift, the large caliber bullet hitting her vest over her right kidney. She reflexively pulls her rifle from her back, the .454 lever action, and she rolls to the side as she watches one of the shifters to her left fall with part of its skull missing. She blocks the anger at the death of one of the Horde, a friend and comrade but instead leans to the opposite side of the truck she had rolled behind.

Only one other shapeshifter had made it to cover, the nearly full automatic fire from down the street hitting every member of her group with precision and ruthlessness. She is still fighting for breath from under her damaged ribs, guessing she has bruised ribs and some damage to her organs from the shot that hit her. She pops out from cover enough to aim her rifle at where the shots had come from, the other shapeshifter with her doing the same on the opposite side.

Immediately the other shapeshifter's head snaps back with a spray of bone and brain, a were-hyena from the security section. Maddie sees the flash of the muzzle only a hundred yards away from behind a parked car's hood on a cross street, and she fires quickly at it. She fires round after round, pausing almost a second between shots to keep the enemy's head down as she moves closer to the one who had been shooting at her. She runs out of ammo quickly, but she had been counting and draws her pistol smoothly, hours of practice and drills paying off. She switches to the grenade launcher and fires the massive pistol at the car the sniper is hiding behind.

The back of the car explodes, the shrapnel tearing apart the trunk and gas tank, setting the gas aflame, not explosively like in the movies, a myth. The spreading flames causes the shooter, a wide shouldered man in dark military gear and a black mask over his face like Tony's, to move away from the fire. Maddie fires her pistol at the man as he fires at her with an AR cradled in his arms, twenty yards between them. He jerks violently backwards and falls as the mass and speed of the huge bullet hits his armored vest, Maddie doing likewise as the .308 bullet hits her in the chest as well.

She is back on her feet almost immediately afterwards, the pain pushed to the back of her mind while she stays focused on the fight and her opponent. The man is also on his feet, but where she had lost her pistol when he hit her, he draws his from his thigh, his rifle shattered from her bullet and fires from a sitting position. Another round hits her in the chest, and she falls again, the impact like a sledgehammer and before she can get up a bullet smashes into her shin. She stifles a scream as she rolls to the side in an attempt to get away from the man's fire, but another shot hits her in the side as she rolls, and the impact aggravates the already injured chest and ribs.

She is fighting not to lose focus and to move, but instead she stifles a scream as the man has stepped on her wounded leg and she turns to look up at him. He has his pistol, a 1911 like the type Rick favors, pointed at her, his eyes calm in the mask's eye slit as he looks down.

"Sorry, kid, nothin' personal," the man says with a slight accent from the northeast, similar to Rick's and Aunt A's.

Before she can respond or act, he fires five shots quickly into her chest, the pain forcing her to scream briefly and pass out from the pain and the damage.

Tony is sitting nervously in the cabin with Richard and Mischa, Aunt A down in the infirmary with Stan as they try to determine when Tasha will wake up. Nita has finished cooking and Richard moves platters from the counter to the table as the were-lion in a wheelchair points out which is ready and where to put it. Tony glances down the hall to the front door again, his hearing straining to listen for the horn sounding to announce Maddie's return from the Guild.

"She'll be back soon," Mischa says, laying her hand on his consolingly. "You know how much she hates paperwork, it probably just took longer than they thought it would."

"I hope so," he says quietly, then turns to the meal set out on the table.

"If the Khan would be so kind to tell me how well the kielbasa is?" Nita asks as she eyes him critically while he cuts a slice from the sausage on his plate.

Richard takes a bite and nods as he enjoys the meat and fat mixed with spices, "It's good, very good."

"And how close to your mother's?" Nita asks, her eyebrow raised as she waits, prepared to mentally take notes on adjustments for the next batch.

"It's good, but not the same," he says with a thoughtful frown, shaking his head slightly. "It's missing something, not sure what. Too much garlic, maybe."

Nita frowns hard and rolls out of the kitchen to the porch, and Richard works hard not to smile as the woman leaves, Mischa laughing once the other were-lion is out of earshot.

"That's cruel, you know that," she says with a relaxed tone as she cuts up her own meat.

"What is?" Tony asks, puzzled as he pours pork gravy over his mashed potatoes.

"Nita has been trying to replicate my mom's old sausage recipe," Richard says in explanation.

"And he has been misleading her on what it tastes like, so she's chasing her tail," Mischa says with a smile and shake of her head.

"We've gotten at least two new styles of pierogis and kielbasa for the barbeque joints in the region from her experimenting," Richard says with a smirk. "They're selling great, and I've got three more of each to introduce and rotate into menus to keep business up."

He pauses from talking further about the restaurant chain as a horn sounds from the front gate, his face locking down as the message register's, Tony's draining of blood and turning pale.

"We need to go out there and do something," Tony says to Autumn in an unoccupied room in the medical wing where she is mixing poultices, potions and elixirs to try and rouse Tasha from her coma.

Autumn looks up at him from under hooded brows, her resemblance to Richard unmistakable when she dons her own mask of calm and dispassion.

"You lost your argument to him, and now you think you can sway me," she says evenly, seeming to pay attention to her mixing but also keenly aware of the teenage nephew across from her. "He is right, we send out search parties, do divinations and location spells. Although we can't do a spell like the last time, since your nature has changed, I have a few other tricks up my sleeves with help from the Xiangs. We will find her."

"But he wants me," Tony counters, looking at her solidly, and Autumn puts down her pestle and bowl.

She looks him squarely in the eyes as she responds, "If they want you, then that is the last thing they should get the opportunity to have. As I'm sure Rich explained, there's no guarantee that they'll let her go, and the gods only know what they will do to you once they have you."

"How am I supposed to sit here and do nothing while she's out there?" he almost shouts, anger filling him.

"You are not doing nothing," she admonishes him. "You are training with the Xiangs and learning more about your magic, how to control it and guide it into more than simply fire and ice. Once you have their language down, you can start learning their spells and script work."

He scowls and stands, walking out of the room in a huff and she sighs to herself, making a note to talk with Richard about approaching his son again so he doesn't do something rash, like his father would were the roles reversed.

Maddie wakes up groggily, awareness seeping into her as pain, and she opens her eyes sticky with dried tears and sweat in the dim light of a dank room. Her hands are shackled and stretched over her head, not an unfamiliar position, unfortunately. This time her legs are a good two feet over the ground, and her ankles are shackled to a heavy weight stretching her towards the ground. She flexes slightly, feeling her jeans and dragon vest are still on, though her feet are bare and her weapons are gone.

"Here, drink," a deep, gruff voice says as a wide and tall figure moves in front of her, the same man she had fought in the street that had killed her friends.

He has a bucket in his hands and pulls out a sponge, squeezing water onto her head which trickles down her face and onto her body. She drinks the falling water greedily, noting he is keeping his body away from directly in front of her, just in case she manages to kick out with what she thinks is a hundred pound weight dragging on her feet. After the third squeeze he drops the sponge in the bucket and moves out of her line of sight to the side.

"Why did you capture me?" she asks, glad to be alive, but her training insisting that she try to gather information that could help her escape or later vector in on this group.

"They say he made a Ranger School for shapeshifters, and you went through it, is that right?" the man says with a slight drawl, a country accent.

Maddie pauses as she thinks about speaking, but decides if it looks like she is cooperating, he may feed her some information in return.

"We call it the Agoge," she says, shifting her head to try and get a better look at him, succeeding only in seeing his profile against a less shadowy wall, a flat top hair cut over a thick jaw and a set of scars across his face. "Only the best of us made it through, then fought in the siege of New Orleans."

"I heard about that," the man says, moving out of her line of sight again, and she moves her head back to the front, an easier position to maintain. "That would have been a sight to see," he says in a murmur, almost unheard by Maddie's enhanced hearing.

"You know he won't let you go after this," she says, no bluster just simple facts. "You know that, you have background on the Khan, and if you've been trying to kill him for the last week, then you know he won't react well to me being captured."

"Oh, we know," the man says, moving back to her line of vision, the man's flat expression on his grizzled and scarred face reminding her of Rick when he is full on Khan mode, flat and expressionless, a predator focused on the tasks ahead. "But you are his favored daughter, and we don't want you or him, not anymore."

"What do you want, then?" she asks, figuring they want some sort of political concession or money maybe.

"That no name merc boyfriend of yours," the old soldier says, his head tilted as he looks at her. "Don't know why, but the Lich is impressed by him, though he needs more training if you ask me."

Maddie stares at him for a moment, her initial reaction that of shock and fear, but then a slow smile creases her face and she starts to chuckle, then laugh. The man quirks his head at her, puzzled at her response, certain he had not hit her head hard enough to give her lasting concussion symptoms.

"What's so funny about that?" he asks, as she has laughed for a good thirty seconds or so.

"A normal man would do the impossible to save the woman he loves," she says with a slowing laugh, lowering her eyes to meet the old bear's. "My mate is no _normal_ man."

Tony moves from the back door of his house in the night, his senses stretched out to their limit. He has loaded up and waited until there was a brief gap in the sentries that did not have a clear line of sight on his house, then slipped out and into the shadowy alcove in the next building. He waits and moves easily and unhurried to the next hiding spot, then on to another in the deep of the night, thanking God that there is no moon out tonight. He moves from cover to cover until he is at a supply shack at the wall of the Bastion, far from the main gate and waiting as the sentry on the walkway moves away, oblivious to his presence.

Now is the riskiest part of his plan, as he pulls his sword from his scabbard and focuses on it the way the Xiangs have spent the last few days teaching him. The drain on him is huge to make the blade freeze instead of his natural tendency for the magic electricity, but he does it and pushes it into the reinforced wall. The blade slips in and Tony holds it there, leeching the energy and warmth from the wall, the two walls of logs separated by three feet of earth and dirt. He holds the blade in place and when he judges the time to be right he pulls it out and then cuts a circle a yard across into the wall with the glowing blade.

He angles the cut to be slightly larger on his side than on the other side, then withdraws his blade and steps to the side. The plug in the wall slides out and lands solidly on the dirt ground of the shed he is in, causing Tony to go motionless, hoping no one heard it. After a pair of breaths when he is certain no one is close enough, he ghosts out the hole in the Bastion's defenses and hurries into the dark forest beyond.

Tony quietly opens the door of his apartment, wanting to get supplies before searching out where Maddie may be at, his father not allowing him to read the note and find out the details of where to make an exchange. He pauses at the door, his nose tickled with wolfsbane, and he frowns at the familiar sounds in the apartment before walking in, looking at the dimly lit pile of blankets in the corner of the living room.

"What are you two doing here? You should be at the Bastion, where it's safe," he says, going to his weapons locker and pulling out a few special blades and some charms.

Jocelyn is perched on the bar of his weight rack, balanced easily, and wearing a thigh length leather jacket over her short and narrow frame, though the handle of a kurki is sticking out of her belt. The last year the young girl had filled out and grown much as Maddie had, though still only eleven and shy of four feet tall, studying magic from Aunt A as Maddie has learned lessons from Rick. Starting her teen years, the young girl's first act of rebellion has been to dye her auburn hair with streaks of green and blue, anime style, though her eyes are the same dark brown as her sister's.

The other person in the room is Ashley, the human homeless girl that Tony had rescued not long ago, and is probably nine and a half years old, shorter and thinner than Jocelyn, having been living on the street until recently. The girl's eyes are the only thing Tony can see from the nest of blankets, though he knows the girl is likely wearing jeans, t-shirt and a too large hooded sweatshirt despite it being summer in Houston. He is also certain that she has her back pack over one shoulder, unable to part with having supplies on hand because of rough experiences on the street.

"She's my sister," Jocelyn says without fear, a folly of youth that Tony smirks at briefly, wondering how he is the old one here. "I want to help find her."

"Well, I plan on combing the city for anything unusual," he says, turning to them with his hand on the pommel of his sword. "That means hours and hours of walking, probably days. I'll go faster without you two to look after."

"It'll go faster if you know where to look," Jocelyn counters with a smug smile.

"What do you mean?" he asks, frowning at her in thought.

"Ashley?" she prompts, and the other girl curls into her blankets a bit deeper.

"There's places people don't go," the little girl says quietly, barely audible to the two with enhanced hearing. "That's where the bad men would hide, if they wanted no one to find them."

"Where don't people go?" Tony asks, glad for the info as it will speed his search along.

"I get to come along," Jocelyn says before Ashley can speak. "We've already talked it over, and Ashley told me where we should look. I'm a shapeshifter, I can keep up with you."

"You sister will have my hide if you get hurt, not to mention dad or Aunt A," he says with a shake of his head. "No way."

"They're already going to flip when they find out you're gone, and that I'm gone, too," she argues, sounding very much like her older sister. "And you can't stop me from following you. I can run faster and jump higher than you, I'm a cat."

Tony rubs his face frustratingly through his mask, "I thought I couldn't get into any more trouble tonight."

Jocelyn snorts, "Even I know that's stupid. Murphy always gets a vote."

Tony edges up to the abandoned car in the parking lot of what used to be the People's headquarters in Houston, an abandoned casino designed to look like the Taj Mahal of Indian Fame. He narrows his eyes and activates the charm on his wrist that allows him to see the color spectrum of magic and pushes more into the spell than usual. The increased power allows him to see more detail and he can pick out the faint indication of necromancy below the huge structure.

"They're here," Tony says with a nod. "I recognize the color and patterns."

"Cool," Jocelyn says with wide eyes staring at the huge dome atop the thick, squat pillar surrounded by four smaller ones and the derelict buildings around it.

"Focus," Tony says, snapping his fingers. "We're on the job, so no distractions, no drifting. Stay focused. One of these guys almost beat me and Maddie with three Agogites as backup and the other almost killed Rick. Stop paying attention and we die."

Her face hardens and she nods once, glad to be treated like an adult, not a little kid like most people treat her, which just annoys her.

"Should I call Aunt A?" she asks, pulling a piece of clay from her pocket the size of a lemon and etched with tiny runes and glyphs.

"Yeah, do that," he says with a nod. "They won't get here for an hour or two, but that's the cavalry. Dad won't be subtle, so we sneak in, position ourselves to move in and free Maddie when they move to defend. We are going to try very hard not to be detected at all. This is a stealth mission to grab Maddie, that's it."

"Got it," Jocelyn says with a firm nod, her hand on the handle of the kurki on her hip.

"One last thing," Tony says, kneeling lower and meeting her eyes firmly with his own. "I'm in command of this mission. If I give you an order, you follow it. No questions, no complaining. I know what I'm doing and I need to be able to trust that you will do what I say when I say it. Understand?"

Jocelyn firms her face and nods, pulling her hair back with deft fingers and pulls the hair tie from her wrist to tie it back. She then pulls the small balaclava from her pocket and pulls it over her head, the black head covering only showing her eyes and bare amount of skin around them. She pulls the clay charm out and slams it against the ground, shattering it and causing a deep blue glow on the pavement which pulses slightly and remains, not dimming.

Tony pats her on the shoulder then leads them from the cover of the derelict vehicle into the maze underneath the Casino to find Maddie.

"Rich, calm down," Autumn says soothingly as Richard is stalking back and forth behind the cabin, rage emanating off of him in waves as he tries to calm his anger and start to formulate a plan to counter his AWOL son.

"Never in the history of calming down has telling the person to calm down gotten them to calm the _fuck_ down," he snaps back angrily, his eyes flashing orange.

Autumn opens her mouth to speak but flinches and turns towards the city, then narrows her eyes angrily.

"Oh, that little criminal is in for it," she murmurs with anger in her own voice.

Richard has stopped at her tone and looks at her while suppressing a growl, "What now?"

"Jocelyn activated the emergency beacon I gave her," she says with a distant look in her eyes as she points. "Forty miles or so, that way."

He snarls, "My money is on her with Tony, and they found something. Look at a map and get me a location, when you are back up top, Trixie will be ready to fly, and I'll take a platoon to follow."

"Are you sure that's wise?" she asks. "We're still not sure who we're up against."

"Tony's forced my hand," he says with an angry shrug, calling Krigsherre from where it sits a few yards away. "We bring our A game and hope it's enough."

Tony moves silently up the side of the building with his fingers jammed into the crevasses for holds as he slowly and carefully ascends to the second story window. He could hear that it was empty of living people and anything moving, so when he arrives, he checked it for traps and wires before easing the window open. He edges over the sill silently and holds the window open as Jocelyn eases inside on silent fingers and toes. He quietly closes the window and moves to the door of the old abandoned office, his senses extended and he moves to allow his scarred eye a view of the hall, activating his charm to allow for seeing the color of magic.

With nothing ahead he signs to Jocelyn to stay close and watch their rear, to which she nods under her head covering. He feels guilty as hell for bringing her along, but he knows that there is no way to make her stay, that apparently a family trait. He motions for her to follow and silently moves down the hallway of what was once the headquarters for the People in Houston, praying that he does not get lost.

The old man is sitting in a folding chair in front of an old table, cleaning his weapons from the fight, Maddie hanging in the center of the room and watching him with interest.

"Last time someone took me prisoner, they beat me a lot," she says with a slight frown at the large man, bigger in the shoulders than Noel, the Horde's resident were-bear and Alpha of Clan Heavy.

The old man looks up for a moment from running a rod through the pistol barrel, picking up an old toothbrush to work at the action.

"You won't break easy," he says simply, looking back to the tools of his trade. "You've been tempered. I could break you, but it would take time, and as you've said, Michaels is not prone to forgiveness if you were mistreated."

Maddie mulls over that for a moment, still looking at him as he assembles the pistol and setting it aside as he pulls out a heavy blade, a kurki not dissimilar to Rick's, and runs a stone along the edge to sharpen it.

"Why didn't you come back?" she asks, her tone neutral but firm and the old man's head perks up to glare at her.

Instead of an accusing expression of teenage angst, he meets that of a warrior instead, seeking resolution to his shifting of loyalties.

He twists his head while shaking it, frowning as he returns to his blade, "I've been fighting since long before you were born, even before your adopted father was born. I don't owe you an explanation."

"Rick taught us about loyalty to our family, to our Clan and to the Horde," she says firmly. "He lost that loyalty when he was left for dead in New Orleans, when the American government left him to die, despite it being against the creed they claimed to stand by, that no one would be left behind. Is that what happened to you?"

He glares at her, running oil over the blade and checking the edge before wiping it off and sheathing the blade on his thigh.

"You could not possibly understand, child," he growls, and his eyes flash blue in the dark of the room, barely suppressed.

"Maybe I don't, but I think it would be arrogant to think that no one ever felt what you feel, too, is stupid," she says with a hard tone of her own, getting another glare as he stands up angrily from the table.

"You talk too much," he says simply as he pulls out a rag and shoves it in her mouth. "Spit it out if you want, but talk again and it gets tied in place."

She only gives him a hard stare of her own as he returns to his table and begins sharpening smaller throwing blades.

Autumn rides the air currents over top of the old Casino near downtown Houston, glancing at where Pegasus Way is sprawled out less than a mile from the complex's parking lot. The Way had spread much since she had arrived, making her nervous looking at its shape through a charm allowing her to see in the magic spectrum. She can see the Ley lines in the distance, crisscrossing in the darkness, no light coming from the rising moon, fully dark. From this altitude, which is secretly terrifying her but she forces herself to calm and focus on the problem, she can see that the northeastern Ley line has a faint trail leading to the Way. She can also see a tendril of magic touching the Casino underground from the Way, the People might have dug tunnels that far which the wild magic is now following.

Having a lay of the land, she brings Trixie into a circling dive around the complex to get multiple views of the inside as she descends, noting that the place still looks abandoned. She can pick out the beacon next to an abandoned car, no Tony near it, though she can pick out a pair of strong presences inside the compound. One is familiar in strength and color, Tony moving slowly through the compound and into the tunnels underneath. The other is different than anything she has ever seen, and as powerful or more than Tony's, definitely more in control of his power and holding it tight.

She glides to be over the wing of the compound opposite where Tony's aura is and pulls out three rocks from a pouch, a trio of runes etched on each. These had originally been over three feet across each, and she had used a hammer and chisel to make the runes a foot across, then imbued them with power and shrunk them. Why make a boulder small, one would ask? She speaks a word that shatters the spell holding the rocks into their small configuration as she tosses them from Trixie.

The boulders gain mass and size, nearly a thousand pounds of hard rock each that plummets to the ground, one crashing into the side of one of the smaller towers and collapsing the dome. The others land among the buildings of the compound, dust filling the air and causing structures to fall. She reaches into the pouch again as she pulls Trixie into a thermal to rise higher and she palms three more stones, hoping her aim is better this time. She never did like that ostentatious, gaudy monstrosity dedicated to sin and ego…

Tony pauses as he hears the distant rumbling and crashing of rock and dirt, part of the complex collapsing in the distance. He holds up the signal to pause, and Jocelyn freezes and watches their back with a puzzled expression, unable to hear or feel anything. He pitches his voice low to barely be heard by her to explain what hand signals are insufficient for.

"The aboveground compound is being bombarded with something, don't know what, but it's taking down buildings and some of the tunnels," he says, then signals to move and follow his lead as he leads them down another level and then into the air ducts.

"That took longer than I expected," Maddie comments from where she is hanging from the ceiling, swaying slightly as dust falls from the ceiling. "But still not a bad response time. Now's the time to rabbit before they really commit and draw the black flag outside. Didn't work out well for the last occupants when he did."

The old man is ignoring her, simply tucking blades away and picking up a pair of tomahawks, then finally a single headed axe with a spike on the backside that looks familiar.

"Is that Rick's old axe?" she asks with a tilt of her head.

He walks over and shoves the rag back in her mouth and then ties a string around her head to keep it in while she struggles. He slugs her hard in the abdomen twice to get her to settle down before finishing. When done he strides from the room and Maddie first glares after him, then starts swinging against the heavy chains holding her.

She bends her knees enough to have the weight off the floor, an uncomfortable partial bend, but it allows her to swing back and forth and she milks it to let her arc back and forth. She builds the swing higher and higher to forty five degrees, then further as she starts to flex her arms and shoulders. She starts to curl her arms and shrug upwards while flexing and at the apex of the arc she manages to jerk up on the chain and grip it in her hands instead of hanging.

She maintains the swing while holding the chain, her stress fractured hands and bleeding wrists fighting the silver to heal from the mixed metal of the chain. After a few breaths she jerks and hops up again another inch, then again as she gets to the link just below the eyehole screwed into the concrete ceiling. She pauses again as she allows the swinging of the weight to slow, no longer needing to flex to keep it off the ground. She starts to twist her legs and body to start spinning the chain she hangs from, and once twisted as far as it will go she jerks on the chain, using the weight and position to let her try to unscrew the eye hole.

Her first attempts fail, the screw staying tight, but after a dozen strong jerks the screw shudders, and after a few more it twitches slightly in its seat. Maddie grins in triumph as she jerks it again and again, ignoring the pain and fatigue in her limbs as she screw starts to work its way out. After a seeming eternity of work, the screw comes loose enough to tear through the remaining tracks in a small explosion of dust and chips, dumping her unceremoniously on the hard floor. She lies there gasping in pain, still shackled hand and foot and looks at the hundred pound weight she had landed on, hard.

Her feet are still connected with only six inches of chain, her wrists similarly, and she will not be able to break the chain without help. Well, this is as far as her plan went, so now to figure out the next step.

The old soldier walks down the stone hall to another room a few dozen yards from where he had been watching over his prisoner and walks in without knocking. Four other men and a woman are there, all humans but with special skills of one type or another he had recruited up in New York who want to make a name for themselves and have questionable morals. They were members of the Mercenary Company that was made to look incompetent when the Khan came through and took down the dragon on the Island.

"You two, with me," he says, gesturing to the woman and one of the men, then to the remainder. "You three keep an eye out in case they try to sneak in and extract her while we're topside."

"The Hindu said it would take longer to find us," the woman says, glancing up as more dust falls and another shudder shakes the tunnels. She is lithe and pale skinned with black hair pulled back into a loose tail at the base of her neck that extends a few inches past her shoulders.

"He was wrong," the soldier says. "We're up, this is your chance to prove you've got what it takes to be the best."

He starts to leave and the two others follow as the other three walk into the hall and move around to patrol the area to keep anyone from getting to the captive.

The man called the Hindu by the others in the complex is sitting in what was once the office for the lead necromancer that ran this building and the People in the area. The crashing buildings is coming from directly overhead of the large chamber he is overlooking from the deserted office. The furniture is in scraps and pieces, old blood on the wall and the dried husk of an old vampire still crumpled against the wall. He looks skyward while muttering in the old language of magic, the pale green glow of his chalky eyes lighting up as he looks at the magic in the world.

He tilts his head to see the strong magic presence gliding over the compound, flaring as the person casts spells while flying. That must be the Mother of Dragons that now lives in the city under the guise of a mere shop owning witch. Not unexpected, as she is in alliance with the Horde for reasons he and his master cannot fathom, except that the Khan had defeated the previous Tiamat. Another glow catches his eye and he turns his head in the direction the soldier and his mercenaries are staying with the captive in.

He quirks an eyebrow to see the auras of the ones they hired, minor compared to his own, and picks out another pair of auras, one blazing bright and familiar to him from the other night. The mercenary is trailed by another aura, a stronger presence than a typical shapeshifter, but still young and undeveloped. He picks up his cane, an instrument he uses to focus and enhance his magic, and strides from the office, a dozen of his vampires following him.

Tony motions a halt and Jocelyn stops a couple yards behind him as he slowly looks over the ledge of the grate leading down to the hall. His senses stretched, he can sense the man turning the corner a few dozen yards away, patrolling the area, and he makes a quick decision to go from stealth to action. He signals for Jocelyn to stay put and wait as he moves to be over the grate in the duct, and when the man is nearly below him he slams into it.

He falls ten feet onto the man's shoulder with his left foot, his right landing on the small of his back as he falls forward under Tony's weight. He shifts and drops his knee immediately on the man's neck, snapping it, the whole action from his drop to landing on the ground less than a second long. He looks back down the hall and back the other way, his ears straining for sound, but he hears no immediate response to killing the man. He looks up to Jocelyn who his cautiously peering at him over the edge of the duct, this being the first dead man she's seen since Rick had saved her from being smuggled as black market shapeshifter parts. Despite that the eleven year old's eyes do not flinch from the dead man or the scent of voided bowels rising from below as the muscles unclench in death.

"Lower a line," Tony says quietly, and Jocelyn quickly unravels a line of 550 parachute cord, which Tony ties around an arm of the man, then gestures her to lift him up.

Tony helps initially, but once out of reach Jocelyn braces within the duct and muscles him up, an impossible feat for a normal human, but doable by a shapeshifter eleven year old, if barely.

"Stash him, close the grate then parallel my path, I'm following his scent, he was probably near Maddie, judging from his lingering scents," he says quietly but loud enough for her to hear.

Once the grate is closed again Tony walks down the hall with his bow out and ready for his next target.

Maddie is on her feet and shuffling as quietly as she can with chains on her ankles dragging on the floor and the hundred pound weight held in her fingers at knee height. She is moving slowly to keep the sound down and she proceeds to the door the old soldier had exited out of. She looks right then left, her nose telling her the man went right, but also that two other scents walked past the closed door to the cell she had been in. She decides to head the way the old soldier did, maybe there's a room with gear she can use to break the chains.

She is a few yards from the door of her cell when she hears the man turn the corner behind her then shout at her. She drops the weight and spins to face the man who has out a straight bladed bastard sword with a wide guard. The man frowns at her as he approaches, pulling what looks like a flask of some sort from his side. Maddie had grabbed the sole knife left on the table when the old soldier had left with his guns, unusable during the magic wave. She had left the pistol, useless to her under the current circumstances.

The man tosses the flask at her and she twists and goes to a knee to avoid the projectile that flies past, then rotates her body and twists to give her the angle to fling the knife out. The man had not expected the quick one-two dodge and attack, and the knife catches him in the throat ten yards from her. Maddie has dismissed the man as a threat already as she squats and picks up the weight with a grunt, then shuffling to the gurgling man as he bleeds out.

She arrives to him still gasping and holding a hand out to her in a desperate plea for help which she ends quickly by dropping the weight on his head. She then kneels and leans over the man, searching his pockets and pouches for a key or something to open her chains. As she is searching she hears another person approach from the opposite direction of the man she'd just killed.

"Hey, stop right there," another male voice says, and she looks over her shoulder to see a man in chain armor and a crossbow aimed at her.

"Shit," she mutters, her restricted movement not going to let her dodge more than one bolt.

He fires and she sprawls to the side to avoid the projectile, missing by inches as she puts the dead guard between her and the new enemy. The man does not rush, but cocks the string and loads another bolt before advancing again, stock to the shoulder of the new styled crossbow and closes to fifteen yards, a shot she will not be able to dodge. She continues to frisk the dead guard as the man aims and takes up slack on the trigger, trying to get smaller behind the bulk of her deceased cover.

The string snaps, joined a moment later by another twang, and the bolt snaps to the side in mid-air by another arrow, this one with a green shaft and black fletching. The other man raises his crossbow and ducks to the side while pulling on the string and Maddie glances behind herself, already know who she will see. Tony is striding down the hall with bow in hand and his Ghost mask on, not drawing but walking calmly towards the other man. As he reaches Maddie, twenty yards from the retreating man with the now cocked and loaded bolt, Tony draws and fires in nearly a blink as the man aims.

The red fletched green arrow strikes through the stock of the crossbow and into the man's chest just before the man is engulfed in flames from the enchanted arrow. She looks back to where Tony is now kneeling by her with his mask pulled off, his fingers reaching to her and entwining in her hair as the rest of the world drops away from them. She kisses him deeply despite the screaming man down the hall near the corner, caring only that her mate is here, that he came for her. He draws back after a few moments that feel like a blissful eternity and his eyes scan over her critically.

"Are you hurt?" he asks, looking for blood and his eyes locking on the hole in her jeans, blood on it and her foot.

"I got hit on the leg when they took me, and some bruised and cracked ribs," she says, looking down at her leg then shaking her head to focus. "I'm just sore and need calories. I need the key."

"No, I got this," Tony says, pulling her to her feet then drawing his sword, blue magic glowing along the edge. Four swipes later and her manacles are gone, falling into a pile on the ground.

"Thanks," she says, standing on tip toe and giving him another kiss.

"Get armed and let's get out of here," he says, his eyes scanning again as he strains his senses to detect any oncoming threats.

"Why do you smell like Jocelyn?" she asks as she pulls the belt off the dead guard and slinging over a shoulder with the man's blades, picking up the bastard sword as well.

"Because she takes after her sister," he says, pointing to the air duct above them that pops open and shows the young girl's balaclava covered head.

"You are in a lot of trouble," Maddie says with a touch of a growl to her sibling. "There's no way Rick or Aunt A said it was okay for you to tag along."

"They didn't want me to leave the Bastion, I snuck out," Tony says, his head tilted to the side while listening. "She and Ashley had the lair narrowed to three places or so, made finding you a lot faster."

"Still in trouble," Maddie says with a glance at the air duct. "You go back topside and wait until I come get you, understand?"

"But-" she starts to protest, but Maddie cuts her off.

" _Now_. Do you understand?" she says with authority in her voice and a flash in her eyes.

"Okay," the girl says timidly, pulling the grate closed and disappearing from view quickly.

"Rick's on the way, and Aunt A is the one causing the ruckus upstairs, I think," Tony says as he starts to lead them down the hall.

"What the hell is she doing up there?" she asks, another crash resounding down the hall from a distant corridor collapsing. "It sounds like she's dropping a mountain on this place."

"No idea, but it's got everyone's attention from the sounds of it," he says as they turn the corner. "What's the plan?"

"We go to the sound of fighting and help our family beat these guys," Maddie says as she spins the sword to the side to test the balance.

Jocelyn is crawling silently down the shaft back the way she had came with Tony, glad her sister is okay, but angry that she has been left out again. She was the one who convinced Ashley the grown-ups needed their help, that they needed to do something or else Maddie or Tony or Rick were going to die because they did not do anything. Then the moment they had got Maddie free, her sister had bossed her out, just like she always does.

She growls and misses the slight sound of claws on the duct work ahead of her as she tries not to mutter angrily under her breath while crawling. She crawls into the intersection and shifts to start moving up but freezes when she sees three pairs of glowing green eyes staring back at her.

Tony pauses as he reaches a corner, Maddie behind him with the long bastard sword in hand, glancing around with her own ears straining for any sounds.

"Someone's coming," he says, then raises his head, turning it. "Multiple incoming, twenty or so, vamps, like in the street."

Maddie snarls, glancing at the mundane bastard sword in her hand, "Wish I had my daggers."

Tony draws his katana and hands it to Maddie without looking at her, "Say _Shandian_ , and it will light like when I use it, but weaker."

She nods and carefully takes the handle from him, spinning the other sword to the side and sheathing it, "Norse?"

"Chinese," he says absently. "The guy I shot in the street is here. And… fuck."

He steps out from the corner, Maddie following with the katana in hand, a longer blade than she is used to, but determined to wield it well regardless. Her own expression hardens even further as she sees what Tony had sensed, the scent also catching up to her. Down the hall within the underground maze like complex they are in is a man who would normally have olive toned skin but instead has a pale complexion. He stands just over six feet tall and is of average build and wears a fine silk three piece suit, a wooden cane in his hand and surrounded with a dozen of the foreign vampires.

Jocelyn is on her knees in front of the man with her mask gone and her hands bound behind her back, her face screwed up tight as she tries to be brave and not terrified at the situation they are in.

Autumn collects her thoughts and blinks in surprise as she banks back around to make another pass on bombarding the compound below and really looks at Trixie. The night and darkness had hidden that the feathered flier is no longer feathered, that its neck is longer, the head flatter and more reminiscent of a classic European dragon style as well. The magic she has been using had bled the changes onto the mount and now she is riding a dragon in truth. As they bank she notes that Trixie is not struggling to gain altitude like she did before, and Autumn notes that it is no longer just a strong glider, but has more powerful wingbeats than before, the wings reminiscent now of an great eagle's not a seagull.

She turns Trixie around and pulls on the reins to have her climb when a flash from the ground catches her attention. Red light streaks out from one of the buildings she had put a large hole through the roof of, and it streaks up to her in the blink of an eye. Trixie bucks beneath her and Autumn is holding on for dear life as the dragon falls from the sky with a shriek of pain, flapping in an effort to slow its descent. Autumn tears at the straps holding her thighs in place and they catch for a moment, but she fights the panic in order to get free.

The last strap falls away and she kicks from the saddle to fall free of the mount with her staff in one hand, grabbing a disc shaped charm on her neck made of clay, a ruby and a pearl cooked inside it with runes inscribed on its surface. She crushes the charm while pouring power into it and speaking a command word, which causes her cloak to billow out and catch the wind like a parachute, though more closely resembling a pair of owl's wings. She glides down towards the ground at a much slower speed under the wings that spread ten yards in either direction from her back.

She is a dozen yards from the ground when a bolt flashes and explodes on the minor sphere of defense she had cast upon herself before starting the bombardment. She flinches at the sound and impact, her right wing catching on fire and she remembers Rich's advice about falling as she hits the ground hard. She kept her knees bent and rolled with the impact, knocking her breath away, but preventing broken legs or ankles, if barely. She levers herself to her feet and shakes her head to clear it, then looks around to see where her attacker is hiding.

Richard leaps over the abandoned car outside the Casino, his nose detecting the scent of Tony and Jocelyn as well as freshly crushed stone. Autumn had said she would be able to do some damage to the buildings from the air, and he had assumed fire or lightning, he had not expected dozens of crushed buildings in the compound and a spire slowly leaning to the ground. He looks skyward as a streak of red light flashes from the ground and hits what must be Trixie in the sky, causing it to plummet to the ground.

He does not give any orders to the two dozen shapeshifters with him, all in warrior form as they sprint through the night towards where Autumn is now drifting to the ground under a pair of massive bird wings. Another flash and one wing crumples, Autumn dropping the remaining distance, falling out of view. Richard is rushing to where his sister had fallen and is twenty yards from the wall surrounding the compound preparing to jump when the ground glows with glyphs and vines shoot up from the ground beneath him.

The vines are long and sinuous, each eight feet long, thick around at the base as a man's thigh tapering to the width of a wrist at the end. All along the vines are small, sharp thorns that dig and grip into the shapeshifters' legs as they wrap around them and drag them from their feet. Richard and a few others manage to keep their feet and cut down with their weapons at the things restraining them, the entire group ensnared in the trap. After cutting the vines a half dozen times and them growing back within seconds Richard roars and shoves his blade into the ground.

He pushes magic into it while focusing his mind and a wave of power washes out from him, disrupting the spell ensnaring them, the vines going lifeless. It is a brute force attack, his sister would have used an abbreviated spell held in a charm of some sort or a focusing word along with the Staff of Babylon to create the effect, costing much less energy. But he does not have the training or experience for that, so he takes a breath as he rallies from the expenditure of power then slashes at the vines holding his legs as he surveys the area around him.

Half his people are on all fours either in warrior form or in animal form, fighting the dead but still clinging and difficult to rip apart vines. He notices that there are five of them that are still in death and shifting back to human form, two with crossbow bolts through their skulls. He dodges to the side on instinct at a flash of movement and the bolt slams hard into his lower jaw instead of the side of his neck which would have skewered his spine and throat. The bolt flies through the bone and muscle, shattering the jaw and causing him to emit a ragged roar amid a spray of blood and bone into the night.

Richard cannot call orders to his people, but even if he could he does what he must to survive and to give his people a chance to win this battle. He leaps from the mass of dead vines, their short thorns still able to entangle and injure him in their limp form, landing closer to the wall enclosing the compound. He mentally pushes aside the blood pumping from his mangled jaw and focuses on his surroundings and hears the snap of the bowstring as the shooter fires at him again. He ducks this bolt, now knowing where the shooter is, and leaps up onto the wall, clawing his way up to the battlements just as another bolt flies out of the short tower upon the wall.

He dodges this bolt as well, though it buzzes the fur on his thigh as it passes by, then is sprinting with his sword spinning around him as he charges the reinforced position. He notices out of the corner of his eye that the vines have re-animated, but he puts that out of mind as he hurls his sword angrily at the battlement. Another bolt flies out, this one too close to dodge, and strikes him in the left shoulder, the fletching sticking out of the crease of muscle. Krigsherre shatters the battlement, stones flying everywhere from the force of it and it arcs back around to return to Richard.

A figure in dark military fatigues, a heavy kurki in hand and blades strapped to his belt and attachment points leaps from the rubble towards Richard. Richard ducks the thrown axe from the man, but in doing so misses catching his sword, as he is pulling the silver tipped bolt from his shoulder with his right hand. The man lands a few yards away and advances quickly with the speed and reflexes of a shapeshifter, his wide build and shadowy face familiar to Richard. The man was a required study for any Sergeant in Ghost Battalion, the man who was a legend in the Special Operations community, creating the unit from scratch when the country needed them most.

The man slashes with the kurki in one hand and an axe in the other, and the accuracy of the attacks coupled with the strength and ferocity causes Richard to pause in his own attacks. The kurki cuts a line across his left bicept, the axe missing chopping into his knee by less than an inch. Richard shifts his own attacks to counter but the man has more experience than he does with all of his own strengths gifted to him from LycV. He is too busy fighting to recall Krigsherre, summoning and guiding the sword not second nature to him as Mjolnir is for Thor.

Richard steps into a backhanded swipe from the axe, taking the spike in his left thigh on the outside, and cold rushes up through his soul as a blue glow enshrouds the weapon. Richard continues with his planned attack though and his right hand flashes out like a viper at the man's back, armored in a Kevlar covered plate carrying vest with sleeve extensions and skirt of Kevlar. His dragon clawed hand pierces Kevlar and plate, tearing a chunk of flesh out of the large man's back and both combatants stagger back from the exchange of blows.

Richard is rubbing his broken jaw into place, the LycV in his system strong and pulling the bones back into alignment fast to allow him the ability to fight and survive, closing skin over it to stall the bleeding. He cannot speak to aid the healing, having to trust in his innate hyper healing to make him whole quickly. The other man had stumbled to a knee while turning to Richard, blood dropping beneath him from the huge chunk of muscle torn from his back near his right kidney. Richard tests his mouth and attempts to speak with the other man for a moment, the man a myth during his years in the service and the opportunity to speak to him worth the pain in his jaw.

"Whr-ry?" Richard growls out painfully, shifting his stance back and forth from foot to foot as his sword flies into his right hand, the wounds on his legs from the vines nearly closed. "Whr-ry… bre treey?"

"Heh," the old man says with a sneer at Richard. "You know better than anyone why. Same reason you deserted."

"Meel… terry…" Richard forms roughly shrugging, then pointing firmly at the ground with the next rough word. "Mer-kha!"

The man snorts, "You really are that naïve, boy? There's no America anymore, it's all coming apart and we don't have a chance. Best bet we have is it to pick the best of those coming back. I've seen what the things we hunted are afraid of. There's no reason to fight for a lost cause."

Richard snarls, realizing that the man who was his idol is dead, killed by cynicism and doubt, only an angry old man remaining.

The old man moves forward quickly but his movements are cautious now as Richard closes with his monstrous katana in hand. The man fights well with the two weapons, the Kurki obviously enchanted as it deflects blows without breaking, as does the axe that used to belong to Richard, Ice. Richard's reach is greater though, and in warrior form his strength more than the man can easily overcome as he had in the initial clash when surprise was on his side. After a few dozen exchanges and probes, Richard manages a kick between the man's flashing weapons and shatter's the man's breastplate and throwing him the ten yards backwards into the stone wall of the emplacement.

He flies back as though launched by a catapult and breaks the rock surface when he strikes, sagging for a moment on bent knees in attempting to recover from the shock of it, broken stone falling beside him. Richard flexes and rolls his left shoulder, black ooze now starting to be replaced with red blood from his injured shoulder, LycV healing the damage from the earlier wound. The man staggers a step forward and drops his weapons before he pulls a quick release on his vest, dropping the armor then his body melting and shifting into his own warrior form.

Whereas Richard's form is measured and proportional, this shapeshifter's form is made for power and strength in a disproportionately large upper body, revealing thick shaggy brown fur over what is the largest were-bear ever seen. Richard pauses in his approach, the upright warrior form a solid ten feet tall and towering over any other shapeshifter the Khan has ever seen, to include Curran of Atlanta. Slabs of LycV enhanced muscle ripple as the bear leans forward and places a large clawed hand on the battlement's wall, cracking the stone beneath its grip. The bear bellows at Richard, shaking the walls of the battlement beneath them, trembling at the power of it, and the Khan does the only thing the leader of the Horde and embodiment of Tyr, Norse god of War and champion of combat could possibly do in this situation…

He roars back.

Autumn holds her staff in front of her defensively as she looks in the direction she remembers the bolt of magical energy came at her from. She had been knocked around a bit, though, so she may be off by a little, though she has seen bad things, she is not the combatant her brother is. Her guess is close to correct as another bolt flashes from a broken window, striking the sphere of protection which flares with translucent blue light showing runes upon it in solid colors the size of her hand. She plants the staff and chants a pair of phrases then a command word while weaving her right hand then thrusting four fingers at the window.

Four different colored streaks of light lance out as fast as arrows, their paths slightly twisting but all striking within the window and flashing with small explosions half as strong as a hand grenade would be with the tech up. When she used to cast that spell she got small pops that were the equivalent of being punched really hard, the staff amplifying her power to what it is now. She then spins the staff in hand and rushes towards that building's first floor to gain entrance and track down the one who had grounded her. When she is ten yards from the front of the building a figure leaps out of a different window, a black cloak billowing out behind it which snaps out into raven wings similar to those she had used to land. She stops and starts to cast a spell to hit her opponent, but the man has a black and silver want in hand and points it at her with a command.

Lightning flashes out and strikes her sphere, which holds but shows visible cracks in the shield as she staggers back from the physical force of the blow. She is chanting, however, and reaches out again with her hand, fingers spread as she throws four more projectiles at her enemy. They all strike a sphere similar to her own which surrounds the man and she mentally curses as she formulates a new spell in her head to use against him. She specializes in charms and shorthand spells encased in charms and items, not many offensive spells readily memorized and prepared to cast.

Another bolt hits her as she starts a chant of her own, and her sphere collapses under the onslaught, sending her crashing back towards where she had originally fallen. The man is approaching her on foot now, tossing the spent lightning wand to the side while chuckling darkly with a sly smile on his face. He is bright blond, cut in a stylish fashion common to rich and famous people, wearing a set of dark robes in red and deep purple from the set of a well-funded movie to include a flowing black cloak. His face is narrow and his eyes have a dark cast to them, as though he is thinking cruel and dark thoughts.

"I had thought the 'mother of dragons'," would be more of a challenge, the man says with a snicker as he pulls another wand from his belt, this one dark red with a yellow vein wrapping up to the tip. "How disappointing."

Autumn has crushed a charm in her hand, though, and pushed magic into it, and the man stumbles five yards away, his feet catching in the quicksand the ground has become in a small circle at his feet. He snarls at her and lowers the wand to point at her, but that charm was the second one she had activated not the first, which was _call animals_. Trixie stumbles over a pile of rubble ten yards to the side, landing on two solid hind legs and one bent wing to walk on three points with her right wing tucked into her side. Autumn notes that she looks like a wyvern from that old table top game as the dragon dashes faster than either human expected to lunge out its two foot long head and snap onto the surprised sorcerer's arm.

The man screams as the limb is devoured whole by the dragon, the sharp teeth and strong jaw having sliced through the bone cleanly. Trixie raises herself up on her hind legs and tucks both wings as she looks down at her screaming meal before shoving one foot down onto the man and pinning him to the small circle of sand he stands in then tearing his head off. Autumn looks on in amazement for a moment then shakes her head to clear it as Trixie finishes pulling the man apart and eating him. She starts to stand with the help of her staff as a bellow roars over the night, sending shivers down her spine which turn to goosebumps over a cold sweat as the Khan's roar joins it.

Maddie stands still as she glares at the man down the hall from them, twenty yards distant with vampires around him, one of them with its clawed fingers wrapped around Jocelyn's neck. Tony is beside her with his own heart racing as he holds his bow to the side and spreads his arms, taking a step towards the man.

"Stop or she dies," the man says, the vampire shifting its sharp claws ever so slightly and a line of blood falling down Jocelyn's neck.

Tony freezes, gritting his teeth at taking orders from this creature, as he can sense there is no life in him, the necromancy coming off of him so heavy it makes a vampire feel like a warm bath in comparison.

"Put the bow away and remove the mask," the man orders, pointing with the staff.

Tony flips the bow slowly across his back then pulls his mask off with his right hand, then dropping it to the ground.

"Hmm," the man says, studying Tony with a tilted head. "I've seen survivors of the magic water factory fires, they are usually comatose or die then something else crawls out of the corpse. You are the first cognizant one I have met, I shall have to experiment with that…"

"Let her go," Tony says firmly, his finger length hair falling just over his eyes.

"That was the deal," the man says with a nod. "But then you had to come here instead of the arranged location. So, since you are changing the deal, so shall I."

"What do you want?" Tony asks, tense and anger boiling inside him, allowing him to forget his fear.

"I will send your girlfriend and her sister topside with my servants," he gestures to the vampires. "You are staying with me, and I shall keep these," he says opening his jacket to reveal Maddie's twin daggers on his belt. "I meant to return them, as I have no wish to anger the Khan, but it seems I no longer need to concern myself with him. We will be beyond his reach very shortly."

Tony can hear Maddie growling behind him and he slowly motions for her to stay in place and he maintains eye contact with the other man.

"You let Jocelyn go with Maddie, now, and I promise I'll come with you," he says, another jolt of adrenaline hitting his system.

"Swear it," the man says with a tilt of his head.

"Don't do it," Maddie says in a rush moving the few yards from behind him to his side and jerking his shoulder back to put them face to face.

"I have to," he says softly, reaching and stroking her cheek with his fingers. "Do you trust me?"

Maddie frowns, then nods, the only two people she trusts implicitly with no reservation being him and Rick. Tony takes her face in his hands and kisses her gently and she pulls him close, turning it into a fierce embrace. They pull apart after their embrace both a bit short of breath and Maddie's face changes to one of determination as she sheathes his katana in his belt. He turns from her, swallowing hard as he pulls a knife from his belt and cuts across his left palm, the scarred skin splitting and blood dripping to the floor.

"I swear that if you let them go safely, I will come with you," he says, his voice echoing with power.

"Good," the man says, nodding with a smile.

The vampire releases Jocelyn, who springs to her feet and sprints to Maddie, even with her hands tied. Maddie gives her little sister a quick hug when she reaches her.

"Run," she whispers then turns and leaps at the man, skin splitting and spilling into her warrior form.

"I made no oath!" she snarls as she dashes at him with werewolf speed, and the man leans to the side as his vampires intercept her in mid-flight.

"Tsk, tsk," the man says simply then speaks a command word while pointing the cane at her.

A blob of sticky webbing flashes out and pins her and three of the vamps to the wall, unable to move or fight.

"Don't!" Tony says, bow out on instinct and ready to draw an arrow.

"If I had wanted her dead, I'd have hit her with lightning," the man says with a dismissive gesture of the hand not holding the cane.

The man raises his cane and golden glyphs are illuminated along its length as he chants a phrase and a command, causing the vampires to stiffen. The vampires tremble as a purple mist exits their noses and mouths, drifting to the man's own open mouth where he drinks it down and into his own being. The vampires collapse, lifeless and the man turns to Tony with a quick breath of contentment as if he had just drank a fine whiskey, and his skin looking less dead like, but far from healthy.

"Come along," the man says, gesturing Tony to come to him. "We have much to prepare before you can meet the Master, your wardrobe for one."

Tony walks to the man who reaches out with his hand and rests it on his shoulder, causing him to involuntarily shudder as the man raises the cane up and points it at the ceiling. The man chants a string of phrases then speaks a command word and the two disappear in a flash of light.

Tony blinks his eyes against the fading spots caused by the spell and looks around at the sun lit room they are now standing in. They are in a stone structure with a high, arching overhead ceiling with stone pillars keeping it up on six points and open air beyond the pillars. On the ground is engraved complicated golden glyphs that are similar to the glyphs that are fading from sight on the man's cane, the marble stone extending beyond to connect to what appears to be a branch of a compound. The man turns and walks down a stone pathway that is on a stone wall that looks down at a lush tropical forest below, the path leading to a castle of a design Tony does not recognize.

"Where are we?" Tony asks, looking around in amazement and rising fear.

"My home," the man says, turning to the young man. "India."

"Well, shit," Tony says in a whisper turning in a full circle as that sinks in, the teleport and his current plan not in his hastily made plan.

Richard leaps over the charge of the bear, wishing it was roaring in an enraged fury instead of the measured huffs and snarls while it attacks, obviously in control of its actions. The bear rolls off the battlement and into the compound, Richard missing his planned landing on its back. Richard leaps down after it as the old Ghost soldier crashes in between a pair of two story buildings in the compound. Richard follows cautiously, his sword at the ready as he hears more crashes within the building.

He finds a hole in the wall and the floor, leading to one of the old casino floors, pillars and old gambling tables within with arching ceilings in the underground. He hurries after where he sees his enemy turn behind a thick pillar, and gets hit hard by a flying blackjack table. He crashes into a pillar with the shattered remains of the table and bounces to his feet quickly to barely avoid being grabbed by the enraged were-bear following it. He backhands a cut with his sword which opens a large rent in its side, but receives a kick to his hip which sends him flying deeper into the casino for his troubles.

After crashing through a pair of abandoned roulette tables he rolls to his feet and is glad to have some space between him and his opponent. He launches his sword at the charging bear, who ducks to the side with unexpected speed and the sword crashes against a stone pillar, diverting it and protecting the beast. Richard runs to the side to try and keep the distance open as he calls his sword back, the bear changing its direction to close with the Khan. The bear is fast, and Richard is out of room to maneuver as the veteran of decades of war and combat reaches striking distance.

Still bleeding at the mouth with an unhealed jaw and blood covering his left arm from his shoulder injury, Richard dives to the side as the bear swings at him, the massive clawed hand tearing a chunk out of his left shoulder, spraying meat and blood on the once vibrantly colored wall. Richard had continued to call his sword to hand though before losing the connection due to the pain and the sword flies through the back right leg of the bear and buries its blade in the stone wall. Richard rolls to his feet and jumps back out of the way of his enemy's reach, assessing his opponent as mortally wounded by still very dangerous.

The bear has fallen to three legs, the fourth severed and lying in an increasingly large puddle of blood, and it launches itself at Richard in an attempt to bring his opponent with him in death. Richard leaps up to the high ceiling and shoves his right hand into the stone, the magic of the draconic hand and his strength allowing him to force a handhold while midair. He hangs from thirty feet up as the shapeshifter below him collapses and falls into the pool of its leaking lifeblood, the warrior form shifting to that of a huge bear form, then as the last beat of its heart halts, into that of a man.

Richard drops to the ground with a swing to avoid the blood and walks to the dead body of his enemy, crouching by it and gently closing the still open eyes with his black scaled hand.

Autumn sprints through the halls, guided by her magical sight and a locator spell enhanced by her staff. She nearly collides with a running Jocelyn, who was running the other way.

"Aunt A!" the girl says, hugging Autumn too tight with her LycV enhances strength. "I'm so sorry I ran off! I just wanted to help Tony and Maddie, because she's my sister. Please don't be mad!"

"Hush," Autumn says, prying the young girl off of her and her eyes running over her to look for injuries. "Are you hurt? Is anything broken or cut?"

"I'm fine, but Maddie's stuck to the wall and he took Tony," the brown eyed girl says in a near panic as she shakes her head energetically.

"Jocelyn, what did I tell you about getting excited?" Autumn says, forcing her own calm after hearing what has happened to her family.

The familiar tone and words snap Jocelyn out of it, and she nods, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath to calm down. After a few moments she opens her eyes and speaks in a more even tone and pace.

"I was captured and Tony swore to go with the man if he would let me and Maddie go unharmed, he swore it in his own blood," she says with a nod as she reaches back into the memories. "Once he freed me and I was near Maddie, she hugged me and told me to run. She leaped at the man to try and kill him, but he threw a spell at her that stuck her to the wall. I was running and didn't see what happened next, but there was a pulse of magic really powerful not long after."

"I felt it," Autumn says with a nod of her own, not voicing that she recognized the feel of the spell used.

Tony looks at the man again, having finished turning in place and takes a deep breath to steady his nerves.

"I came with you, so now what?" he asks, tilting his head.

"Your potential is far too great to squander in the Americas. The Master and I will instruct you on the proper use of magic so that you can realize your full potential, and help further the Master's plans," the man says gesturing to the horizon with his cane.

"I've got my own plans," Tony says, raising his bow and drawing a black fletched arrow. "They don't include your master."

The man raises his hand with the cane and spreads a pair of fingers, a globe of defense encircling him. Tony has paused for only a breath as he seats the arrow, pushing as much magic into the shaft and focusing on the tip as he can manage before releasing the string. The arrow lances out and the god crafted weapon lances through the globe and shatters it into iridescent pieces, smashes the haft of the cane in the man's hand and cuts through his chest like butter. The arrow continues its path and buries itself a foot deep into the stone wall a hundred yards distant.

"I said I'd come, and we're here, oath fulfilled," Tony says as he lowers the bow.

The man had staggered from the blow, but does not even raise his hand to his wound, and Tony notes that no blood flows from it either, just a black ooze.

"Stupid children, always wanting to do it the hard way," he says, starting to raise a hand.

But Tony had learned a good lesson from Rick and Maddie, don't wait for speeches, act immediately, you may not get a second chance. The red fletched arrow strikes the man in the chest, causing him to burst into flames, and as the figure stumbles and starts to raise a hand again the blue fletched arrow strikes and freezes the man solid. Tony runs forward, swinging the bow as hard as he can, breaking the man's head off and sending it into a courtyard below.

He takes a few breaths to start to calm himself but looks in shock as a mist rises from the stump of a neck and floats away towards the castle.

"Oh, shit," Tony says, running after the mist. "Lich."

Richard cuts the last of the webbing holding Maddie in place and the werewolf lands unceremoniously on the ground before fighting the remaining strands to stand. She is staring intently at Autumn, who is standing where Tony and the man had disappeared at, her eyes glowing and staff waving as she detects the magic remaining in the air.

"What's the story?" Maddie asks her in her deep growl of a voice, though already fearing the truth.

"He teleported out, I don't know where, and it's the strongest, most focused version of this spell I've ever seen or heard off," she says with a frown and a sigh as she shakes her head.

"What do you mean?" Richard asks, his voice worse than Maddie's due to the wounds he'd taken in the fight, his jaw still knitting itself whole.

"Teleport doesn't work as well as most spells, it fails about one time in five, even with a master spellcaster," she says, shaking her head. "This was less like a teleport than a site to site transfer, he must have had something focused, keyed and enhanced to use as a beacon to send him to another site, prepared with a huge amount of very expensive items to receive them. I have no idea how to pull off something like that."

Maddie moves over to where Tony's blood is on the floor from the oath he had sworn, "You can use it to find him, right?"

"I'll try, but that's just the start," she says with a shake of her head. "Getting him back will not be easy with a spellcaster like this involved."

"Is this guy Roland level bad?" Richard asks, curious and worried at her reactions and closed expressions, a sign to him something very bad has happened.

"This guy, no, but his boss probably is, and they have a base already, unlike Roland who moved his whole power base here to North America," she explains.

"Which means he'll have more resources than here in America to use and command," Richard says as he fights to stay calm, his oldest child in the clutches of epically powerful enemies in a place he does not know.

Odin sits upon his throne, his single eye focused on the images, scents and sounds upon the distant continent where his power is only a whisper, and he makes a mere gesture that causes the warhammer by his side to twitch and move…

Tony has his bow slung and his katana in hand with blazing blue energy sparking off of the blade as he slices through the door then kicking it open. He rushes into the castle, following the retreating mist as it flows through the halls at the pace of a run for a human, which he catches up to but cannot surpass. If he remembers the little he had read about them in his brief time playing Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, a Lich inhabits a dead body, usually its own, but its soul is tied to an object. He can't remember the name of it, but he thinks it was small, usually expensive and sounded like a dirty word.

He runs down stairs after the green mist, glad that the building seems to be empty, detecting no other people in the huge palace so far, and the scent of it being slightly musty, as though no one has been here for at least a month. He is taking the steps fast but falls behind the mist as it travels down the winding marble staircase, and he pauses as he reaches the bottom. He faces three doors set into the solid stone and more roughly hewn than the above passageways he had traveled with no indication of which one the Lich's essence traveled through.

He activates the charm that allows him to see the magic of the world and the right hand door shows the residue of the Lich, so he slices the hinges off and shoves the door aside. He hurries into the cavernous room but after a dozen steps slows to a walk and looks around himself in amazement at the contents of the room.

The chamber is cavernous, the ceiling twenty yards up and rough, illuminated by fey lanterns on the wall just as the rest of the castle has been, obviously set to automatically turn on during the magic waves. Fifty yards on a side, the room is huge but it has to be, as it houses open chests of riches piled high on all sides, gold and silver spilling out onto the floor. He pushes aside the thought that he is surrounded by millions of dollars' worth of precious items though, as he sees the green mist at the far side of the room moving to an upright shadowy figure he cannot discern, even with his enhanced senses.

He pulls and fires a blue fletched arrow at the center of the figure as the mist reaches it, pouring magic into its head as Tony continues to move towards it, now seeing the details through the darkness. The arrow skips off the unaffected polished marble chest of the statue, a nine foot tall gargoyle like creature with stone reptilian wings protruding from its back. Tony slows his steps to a halt as the figure shakes itself, the marble moving fluidly like muscle, similar to the advanced golems used by the Rabbis.

"Very well," the man's voice comes from the open maw of the creature as it steps off of the platform towards Tony. "Instead of immobilizing you with magic I will instead make you physically incapable of fleeing or resisting. Wasted time and resources, but we shall return to that at a later date."

Tony has fired a red fletched arrow, which also skips off with no effect and pulls out a black fletched one while moving to the side in order to put a mound of stacked books between them. The red fletched arrow ricocheted into said stack, and the start of a great blaze within the room illuminates the approaching Lich/Golem in more detail. Resembling a large and muscular man but with a head that is a cross between a Velociraptor and a man and with short claws on its fingers, it walks towards him with no sound but its heavy footsteps. The last concerns him, because it means that there is no heart beating for him to shoot, no breathing lungs for him to damage, no weak point for him to exploit.

He comes from the other side of the now engulfed stack of old books, the sight of the burning tomes would have made Aunt A cry, and the golem has leapt into the air towards him. Against all laws of physics, the stone wings keep the golem aloft with two pumps of the massive wings to speed it towards him. The fact that he trains almost exclusively with shapeshifters is the only reason his reflexes allow him to fire his arrow while dodging to the side and pulling out another. The arrow he fired had sunk into the creature's eye, the tip protruding from the back of its head but otherwise does not affect the Lich from controlling the body as it lands heavily but balanced.

Tony ducks and rolls to the side towards a heavy chest with its top open, a pile of US bearer bonds stacked in it haphazardly, but is too slow as the golem swings the flat of its massive wing at him. The blow knocks the wind from him and he drops his bow as he is flung ten yards into a wooden shelf filled with porcelain figurines. The shelves collapse onto Tony with the figurines shattering from the collision and Tony struggles to rise from the debris. He gathers his feet in time to dodge away from the reaching fingers of the Lich, drawing his sword on reflex as he does.

He turns and executes the trained cut down with the glowing blade, severing the right limb at mid forearm. The golem lunges out with the other hand and grabs the back of Tony's quiver, picking him off the ground.

"There is no need to make this more difficult than it has to be," the Lich says from the open mouth of the construction.

"Fuck you," Tony says simply, cutting up in front of him to sever the right arm off of the body at the shoulder as well as part of that side's wing as well.

The Lich slams Tony hard against its own chest repeatedly, causing his grip on his sword to fail and his head to swim from the pain and the concussions. The Lich holds him at arm's length again then drops him unceremoniously to the ground before turning to the severed limb. Tony cradles his chest with his right arm as he tries to roll towards his sword, certain he has cracked ribs and some type of head trauma from being tossed around and bludgeoned. He tries to push to his knees, but his chest hurts too much and he tries to crawl to the handle of his sword a few yards away.

The golem has picked up and placed its limbs back in place, a black line over the grey surface showing where the limb is now reattached.

"I do admire your tenacity, though misplaced," the Lich says, flexing the reattached hand while striding easily over to the sword and kicking it well out of reach. "But you are certainly no match for me, regardless of the body I inhabit, and you certainly will not find my phylactery to destroy it. But considering the trouble you are causing me, perhaps I may be able to persuade my Master to allow me to use you as my next host instead of trying to coerce you."

Tony grimaces as the bones in his chest grate together with each beat of his heart, the pain threatening to drown him into oblivion as he tries to breathe. His bow cast aside and his katana gone, he scrabbles with his hand stretched outwards in the debris of the battlefield to find something to use as a weapon, anything…

The Lich pauses and looks up at the sound of crashing from above, then part of the ceiling explodes inward as a short handled war hammer flies into the room faster than the eye can follow. A crack of thunder and lightning fills the room and tosses the golem thirty yards into the wall so hard it breaks off a wing at the impact. When the Lich raises its head to look upon the room again Tony is now standing where he had been lying at, Mjolnir in hand.

He is wearing blue armored vest and scale armor down his arms, katana sheathed on his hip with a full quiver on his back with his bow slung there with it. He wears no cape or helmet, his hair now longer and a dirty blond, falling just past his shoulders in a cascade and blond stubble on both scarred and unscarred sides of his face.

Before the Lich can react Tony raises the hammer high and lightning strikes its head through the hole in the ceiling and the levels above him in a flash of blinding light. After a moment collecting the power of the storm Tony thrusts the hammer forward and the Lich/Golem shudders as its body is tossed against the solid wall and endures the punishment. When Tony lowers the hammer and walks to the smoking body of the Lich the limbs are in broken pieces around it and the head missing its jaw.

"How?" the Lich asks, his voice pained now and coming from the corner of what looks like a delicate container of some sort that is revealed in the cracked chest of the golem.

"Because I strive to be worthy," Tony says in a voice that is not his own as he reaches back with the hammer and strikes the now exposed phylactery with the hammer of the gods.

Purple colored Magic explodes outwards from the destroyed container tossing Tony/Thor back into the center of the room, though he recovers quickly and rises to his feet as the items in the room start to settle again. He looks around at the room for a moment then down at Mjolnir in his hand, his thoughts clear but not entirely his own. After staring at the enchanted weapon for a moment he throws it up into the air and the weapon flies through the hole out into the sky and beyond. The weapon gone, Tony's appearance fades from that of an Odinson to his normal, mundane outfit of jeans, long sleeved t-shirt and leather vest with his equipment, without injuries or wounds.

He looks around at the scattered treasures in the room, again amazed at the value of it but also acknowledging that he will be able to take none of it with him. He begins to search for a mirror so he can attempt to call his family before the magic crashes.

Richard is standing behind the cabin at the Bastion in jeans shirt and vest, his sword on his hip with his arms crossed as he tries not to fidget while watching his sister drawing symbols on a mirror with a marker in the pre-dawn darkness. She had assured him that Tony is alive and the direction he is from where they currently are, but she could tell with help from her staff that the distance was great. Beside her on the grass is a heavy oak chest, in which resides the remaining Tablets of Destiny, two of them destroyed in his battle against Tiamat and the rest with minor damage from when they were stolen by Gaston and crafted into armor that his sister destroyed. She finishes writing the glyphs on edges in the mirror and looks over her shoulder at Richard, Maddie standing next to him anxiously shifting from foot to foot and wringing her hands, wearing jeans and dragon hide vest with her weapons.

"Okay, if he's made a mirror to match mine, then when I activate the spell, we should connect," she says, rising to her feet in front of the five foot tall, two foot wide mirror. She speaks a phrase in Gaelic and the runes on the mirror glow white with power just before the surface flashes silver then reveals the view from a distant mirror.

In the mirror is Tony standing in what looks like a treasure vault of some sort in a stone walled dungeon, a hole in the ceiling with a single shaft of sunlight falling through to the gloomy interior. His face is uncovered and the lines of his unscarred side indicate heavy fatigue as he sits in plush antique chair that looks to have come from the palace of Louis XIV. His hair is somehow longer than it had been twelve hours ago when he left, falling just past his shoulders now, and a short beard on the unscarred side of his face. The overall effect makes him look like he is in his thirties rather than approaching eighteen years old.

"Tony!" Maddie exclaims, moving to the mirror and halting just before touching it, anxious again as she cannot actually reach out to him.

Tony has risen from the seat, not moving as quickly as she did, obviously exhausted, and reaches out with a smile to the mirror, placing his hand on the surface. Maddie smiles with tears in her eyes as she places her hand over his on her side of the mirror.

"I'm glad you're okay, is Jocelyn alright?" he asks, eyes locked onto her brown ones.

"She's fine," Richard says brusquely, making the young couple tear their eyes from each other to him. "I lost nine people in our _hasty_ attack on the Casino to an ambush by the Sergeant Major and one of his magic users."

He emphasizes the word and Tony stiffens, his hands at his sides curling into fists.

"I'm sorry, but I had to go, they were going to kill Maddie if I didn't show," he says with a firm jaw and not looking away from his father.

Richard's jaw is firm and he takes a deep breath before uncrossing his arms, "You look healthy but worn, are you okay?"

"It was the magic user we faced in the streets that put Thor down," Tony says by way of explanation. "He teleported us to India and I destroyed his human body once we got here, but he was a Lich and he moved to another body which protected his container."

"Phylactery," Autumn interjects.

"Yeah, that," Tony says with a nod. "He was beating the shit out of me and I was losing, it was this weird fallen angel looking statue of marble, and I'd cracked a rib or two and messed up my arm, my sword and bow were well out of reach."

"I'm assuming you won, I hope," Richard says with a touch of humor, his experience as a soldier and mercenary allowing him an ability to be flippant in the face of dire circumstances, Maddie smirking at the comment but Autumn frowning at her brother and looking worried.

"Yeah," Tony says with a smile of his own, glancing back at the hole in the ceiling. "About that… Mjolnir came and granted me Thor's power for about a minute. Healed me, allowed me to shatter the golem and destroy the Lich's vessel, then I sent it back to Thor."

"I received word that he awoke during the night, unexpected and not due to anything done by the healers or magic users trying to wake him," Richard says with a nod. "I'll have to thank Odin for the help."

"Well, I'm still stuck on the other side of the planet," Tony says, rubbing the back of his neck. "I guess I could walk home, but that will take a while."

"Are you secure where you're at?" Richard asks while holding up a hand to stop Maddie from talking, her mouth open and an eager expression on her face.

"The castle's empty, from what I can tell, but I doubt there's any food around, the guy was undead," he says, looking around. "But there's jungle outside, so I should probably be okay for a while until someone comes to investigate him not reporting in or whatever."

"Hopefully that will give us a day or two," Richard says, turning to Autumn. "We'll work on finding a way to get you here quickly. If not, we'll plan that in two days you'll move out from where you're at to a safe haven where I can have someone meet you for pickup."

"Okay," Tony says with a nod, relief on his expression for having a plan to get home.

"We'll give you two some time to talk," Autumn says with a nod and walks away with Richard into the house to discuss the problem before them.

Epilogue…

Richard walks onto the stage in front of the University of Houston's theatre, a packed crowd of media, students and average citizens straining the capacity of the building. He smiles politely at the man who is standing with two others on the stage, one a recorder with a pad of paper, the other drawing on a blank sheet of his own. The man in the middle is in his fifties, tall and standing just over six feet tall, in a gray suit with a white shirt and a red tie, his thinning hair still carrying a touch of black in it. The man is fit, not slim but not fat, though not looking to be an athletic type, either. The man has a smile that beams at Richard, a practiced politician, salesman or television personality, of which he is the last.

"Mr. Michaels, thank you so much for making time for us," the man says with a smile, his gray eyes sharp and focused, the audience clapping and nearly drowning out his words.

"Thank you for coming," Richard replies, taking the man's hand in his own, smiling politely and nodding his greetings to the other two men as well before turning to the crowd and waving.

Richard is wearing a black suit and red vest over a white collared shirt and a dark yellow tie striped with blue, his hair cut to stubble on his head, his face clean shaven. He gestures for the man to sit in the chair provided and sits opposite of him, the chairs angled to view each other as well as the crowd, the other two men taking seats at small writing tables to let them record the interview.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Stephen Martin, interviewing Richard Michaels, CEO of Hoffman Resources, who recently joined the International Fortune 500 Club," the interviewer says to the slowly settling crowd, his face smiling and pleasant, glancing at the notepad in his lap as the tech is down and magic rules the world, then turning his attention back to Richard.

"Mr. Michaels, again, thank you for time out of your busy schedule to allow us this opportunity," the man says with a nod, now on the record. "I understand that you have hundreds of businesses now under your supervision, as well as the shapeshifting community for Texas and its neighboring states. To what do you attribute your success of the last few years, when previously you were simply a member of the local Mercenary Guild, making ends meet?"

Richard smiles in a subdued fashion, playing to the artist to the side as well as the audience, his efforts on not intimidating anyone or scaring them off. The effect is an "aw shucks" expression better seen on an old TV show from the Deep South as he shakes his head.

"Truth is, I never stopped being a simple man," Richard says, slowly shaking his head and speaking clearly. "I was given an opportunity by the local Pack to manage Hoffman Resources, and I dedicated myself to it, just as I did during my previous jobs, and to the tasks presented to me since. Some would say I was just lucky, but luck is a combination of opportunity meeting preparation, and I happened to be prepared."

"Mr. Michaels, since you became a shapeshifter in a failed raid by the Texas Rangers," the interviewer says, referencing his notes. "You have become a leading figure both in the commercial community and in the law enforcement community, pushing your fellow shapeshifters to patrol and conduct citizen arrests and hazmat control of dangerous creatures produced by the magic waves. Is this true?"

"The raid was less than completely successful, this is true," Richard says with a slight frown and a shake of his head, appearing disapproving. "But we did manage to halt the operations of a powerful black market dealer that was trafficking in shapeshifter body parts, as well as rare items of illegal and immoral origin. I'm a strong proponent of the rule of law, and that the people should be represented fairly, which is why I've stressed working hand in hand with local law enforcement agencies. And please, Mr. Martin, call me Rick."

The last is said with a slight smile, and Richard leans back with a comfortable smile as the interviewer takes note of the tone, carefully selecting his next words and the following question.

"Thank you, Rick," he says with a practiced nod and smile of his own. "You can call me Steve."

"Thank you, Steve," Rick says with a polite nod in response, the verbal dance continuing.

"Rick, although you have many admirers and allies, there are still many people in the country that see both yourself and other shapeshifters as barely controlled monsters, creatures that are far less than men," he says in an even tone, his words accusing where his voice and features remain passive. "Houston has suffered many near catastrophes in the last few years in which the shapeshifter community has been a prominent participant."

Richard allows himself the small smile of amusement rather than the grin he wishes to display, knowing he looks more like a grinning cat when he does. He can hear the change in the man's heart rate and the smell of his skin as he leads up to a baited question, and the trap behind it.

"Thirty years," Rick says before John can ask his question, cutting in quickly between the man's breaths.

"Excuse me?" John asks, leaning forward only a hint with a questioning expression as he adjusts his seat in surprise at the interruption, off balance now.

"Thirty years," Richard says clearly and carefully. "I was uninfected with Lyc-V for thirty years before I became a shapeshifter. I served with distinction and honor within the Army for over a decade as well as after leaving the service and holding an honest job protecting civilians as a paid contractor. I did not wake up from the job where I was infected slathering for blood and meat."

He pauses at the last and glances at the audience with a small smile, and the interviewer takes the bait, "What did you feel when you woke up, if I may ask?"

"I was thirsty," Richard says with a closed lipped smile back at John. "I had been unconscious for some time and though I had fluids replaced with an IV, it's not the same as a good drink of water. I asked to see my boss and if they could bring me some water when I woke up."

"According to my research, not all… victims of the infection wake up that way," John says, pausing and unable to find a better term for those attacked or exposed to Lyc-V.

"No, not all do," Richard says with a sad shake of his head and a frown, playing to the group. "I was fortunate, and have done well since my acceptance into the local Pack, what we now call 'The Horde'. We've worked hard and since I have become the leader of the Horde the rate of loupism within our territory has drop to a mere fraction of what it once was."

"And you have a title among The Horde as well, 'The Khan', is that correct?" he asks with a tilt of his head.

"After I did a job in South America where I used that codename I returned and my people saw fit to give me that nickname, and it stuck," Richard says with a shrug.

"There is another title being tossed around that you might be interested in, that of Mayor," John says with an inquisitive tilt of his head.

Richard chuckles and holds his hands in a calming gesture, "Slow down, I'm not interested in _any_ public office. If nominated, I will decline, if elected, I will refuse."

"Many politicians said the same before arriving in office," he rebuts.

"I'm no damn politician, and you can quote me on that," Richard says with a chuckle, the audience laughing as well. "The idea was brought up once a few months back, but I stepped on it hard. The population of this city and of this state is primarily human, both imbued with magic and without, with the minority being humans who share their nature with another, shapeshifters being only one of the myriad of people that inhabit this city and state."

" _That_ , sounds like a party line," John comments.

"It's no secret I push hard for equal rights between the communities. I don't believe a justice system can have a double standard simply because of the color of a person's skin, the religion they believe in or if they have different magical capabilities than others," Richard continues. "What matters is the heart of the person, good or evil, and that is determined by actions and words, not how they were born or an accident in their past. We have a somewhat segregated legal system because it is recognized that what existed before the Shift was inadequate for what we have now, and we have adjusted to make it work."

"If we could move on," John says with a polite smile and nod, sensing he won't get much more on that line of questioning. "I'm told that the 'nickname' your people gave you shortly became a title, and that when you meet with leaders of other groups, to include government and law enforcement, you insist that they use that title. Why is that, if it's only a nickname?"

Rick smiles seriously as he nods slowly, "If it were a mere nickname, I wouldn't care. At the start, it was only that but it became much more than that, in a very short amount of time. Especially once I defeated the old Alpha of the Pack for arranging for the murder of his wife in order to allow him to find a replacement."

He pauses, allowing that brutal fact to set in before continuing, "It probably sounds like hubris and vanity to require my people and other persons of power to address me by a lofty title such as 'Khan'. And in part, I agree, as I am unsure I am worthy of the honor they give me by calling me that."

"Then why require it?" John asks, a look of consternation more for the crowd than for Richard.

"You said earlier that I have brought my company into the Fortune 500 club, and technically, that's why we're having this interview and open session, to congratulate me on making the list and talk of business and some politics," Richard says with a wave and a tight smile to the crowd. "But the job I have in the shapeshifter community and with the Mercenary Guild is more troubling to a lot of people in power, and when I act in my capacity as the leader of the shapeshifters in my domain and senior investor of the Guild, I am not Mr. Michaels, or Rick. I am the Khan. It is an office, a job. Just as if I were a police officer or Texas Ranger full time. It reminds myself and anyone else hearing it that I am more than just a guy filling in a job, I have a very serious, dangerous and important job to do. That should not be taken lightly, and should be given the gravitas it deserves."

"You mentioned the job you do with the shapeshifters," John says, pouncing on the phrase, as Richard knew he would. "That you are their leader, their Alpha. Why then become so involved in the rest of the community, when your help wasn't asked for? Do you think you know better than the people of this city on how to run their businesses and to govern themselves?"

Richard smiles, working hard to not show his teeth and his predatory smile, having hoped for that turn of phrase, "You make it sound as though I am a conquering invader, sacking a city and slaughtering its inhabitants." He laughs lightly at that, turning to look not at the interviewer across from him, but the people gathered in the seats and standing in available space to listen and hear him.

"I have urged every willing human being possessing LycV in their system to participate in the Mercenary Guild and to assist in hazmat clean up in the city," Richard says while looking at the figures illuminated with fey lanterns, leaning forward in his seat to engage them, not John. "Have we made money from Guild contracts due to my urgings? Yes, we have. Have we acted, without payment and coercion to end lethal threats in neighborhoods across the city? Yes. Has the Horde demanded payment from the city, state or country for our acts of goodwill?... No."

Richard leans back and settles his jacket, "As I said before, I don't want to be Mayor. Miller can keep that job. I don't want to be governor or president, or the county clerk. Some will look at my good works and ask what my motive is, and to be perfectly honest, my motive is right here."

He waves at the room full of people, packed cheek to jowl to listen and watch the interview.

"What do you mean, Rick?" John says after a moment when it is obvious the Khan is waiting for him.

"I was born before the Shift," Richard says, seemingly off topic, crossing his legs as he leans back. "I don't remember, but I heard stories and read about how in America people would gather all the time in large groups, how we could exchange ideas freely, and that in the main, we did not worry about our safety and security unless you went to the one bad neighborhood out of twenty in the city limits. You look at almost any other city in the country and you will find death rates that are astronomical compared to what we have in this city and county, seven to twelve times higher with rare exceptions. You will find black marketeering and smuggling that is unregulated and uncontrolled. Look at our own docks and you will find practically nothing."

The audience has started clapping and risen to a standing ovation, Richard leaning back in his chair and pouring himself a glass of water from the pitcher beside him.

End…

 _Pour encourager les autres_

Kill one to motivate the rest

 _Arbeit Macht Frei_

Work sets you free

For those who fight for it, life has a flavor that the timid and sheltered will never know and will never understand.

She needed a hero, so that's what she became.

And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you…Nietzsche.

 _Sic transit gloria mundi_

The glory of man is fleeting. Caesar.

A martyr would gladly die for his purpose, but a hero would live for it.

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